Karen, Princess of Shadows
by Death Boo
Summary: sequal to shadow of life, Naruto's daughter Karen, and her quest after the past starts! amazing! Chapter 19, Back from the dead, or at least from a two year absense.
1. Genin

Karen, Princess of Shadows.

A Naruto fanfic by DeathBoo

The squeal to "Shadow of Life"

Well, here's the story, enjoy it, hate it, or simply worship it…

Disclaimer: I do not claim to hold any writing \ producing \ distributing rights over the Naruto anime or Manga, Kishmonto holds the rights, not me.

Chapter 1: Genin

Soun was watching the genin tests, he was a 19 years old chunin, the first one to enter was Inuzuka Hob, Soun looked at the two types of forehead protectors, if Hob will pass he will be granted with one from the left suitcase, it had the village symbol with a few adjustments, to announce that Hob wasn't a total sound.

His parents were refugees from the leaf, they all escaped when the Kyubi reappeared, the one who alarmed them was the leader of their community at the sound, Uchiha Sasuke, he held a position close to that of the sound kage, and he was in good terms with him.

"Now, show me an henge" he asked the kid "and don't try pulling anything with the dog" he warned him, the genin test was about regular jutsus, family ones were better kept until later years, and some of the clans insisted that the child should first prove himself worthy by turning into a genin before any secret jutsus should be taught to him.

"Henge no jutsu!" the boy shouted, a perfect mirror image of Soun was standing there, from the posture up to the black bags, courtesy of sleepless nights trying to make the test hard enough to block leaking of not-good-enough students into the rank of genin but that would still leave space to students who had one bad skill or could be great if they get a good teacher.

"You pass, good work, Hob, you are now a sound Genin, you'll get the forehead protector at the ceremony tonight at seven, and you'll meet you teammates tomorrow morning" Hob was a sure pass, he was good at all jutsus, and was smart enough to know he wasn't meant for brain fights, and so he avoided mental conflicts, "a shinobi knows which battle to fight" was also a shinobi saying, after all.

"next! Uchiha Gray" Gray entered the room, he had blond hair which was tied down by a small pony, he was already 13, he failed last year, but worked hard with his dad and today he was considered the best of all students, "Gen-Henge!" Gray shouted, the room shifted a bit, and now Soun was standing in front of himself, the kid was great, using genjutsu to replace the room settings, he made it look like Soun was the student "Nice, you pass, congratulations, really well made illusion, but you forgot to change the shadow from the sun, so you still have to work about it" Soun pointed at the special sound protector, he's suitcase held four of them this year, he had already gave away half.

The ex-leafs were good shinobies, and under the 3rd sound kage management, they helped the sound grow and it was now expected to surpass the leaf in a generation. "Doro, come in" the sound came in, he was one of the girls crush targets, and Doro enjoyed every second of it, "Henge!" he said quietly, in a flash of smoke another Soun appeared, but Doro was a sound expert and he also wanted to impress the tester, so he disguised his voice as Soun's and they both spoke together "Good work good work, I'll I'll see you see you tonight tonight at seven (at seven, be there be there".

The rest of the tests passed as expected, 11 passed until that point, Rock Tack has outdone himself, actually transforming into an exact copy of Soun, which was an improvement from the too short or over fat versions he produced throughout the years, he probably got lessons from his mother, Sakura was an expert at those things, even if Lee was ever worse than his own son.

Soun sighed, he pushed the last ex-leaf student to the back of the line, he hated admitting it, but he was afraid of her, she had a fox always running around her, she burned more than 5 times the chackra needed to use the most basic jutsus, and on top of all, her chackra was different than anyone's else's, a chill passed through his bones whenever he felt her, Karen was simply scary, even if she was only 12.

"show me a henge" he asked, masking the fear with tiredness in his voice, she started gathering chackra, she didn't use it to transform normally, she had a talent in body metamorphic no justu, it wasn't a common jutsu, it was mostly used by spies and thieves, and was almost never taught to kids. Her hand grew much larger, he body longer, smaller eyes, all the signs of her being a female were gone, only then she performed the jutsu, "you pass, congratulations, be here at seven to get the headband" he said quickly, Karen just sighed and walked to her apartment.

"you aren't going to do it!" Ino yelled at her husband, the ceremony was over and now he was on his way to the Kage, they needed to discuss the teams placements, "o.k… I won't put Gray with her, but I really don't see any reason not to, he's her best friend" he said, but he knew exactly why she resented it, Karen was Naruto's daughter, and missions weren't afternoon playing time, Karen could slip like Naruto did sometimes, or worse, let loose of that thing, like Naruto did.

Sasuke still remembered that night, Ino walked to his place, Gray was asking for Ramen, and the store was closed, since Sasuke had none, they walked together to Naruto's place, they always had Ramen, no matter the hour, when they got there they saw the lights were on, they snack in, Naruto and Hinata were nowhere around, but Karen was crying, Ino picked her up when he saw the blood prints, he quickly followed them out, they led to the Hokage momentum, he saw Naruto there.

Sasuke was about to talk to him when he saw how Naruto moved, chackra was irrupting from him, he was like a samurai who has taken off his armor, willing to sacrifice his life for a bit more speed, and then Sasuke saw what happened to Naruto, he was growing larger, a tail sprouted out, and by that time Sasuke knew he had no chance, he called the alarms, but only few families managed to escape the falling village.

Sasuke brought them to the sound, he begged for audience with the kage, but after the meeting the leaf shinobies were a part of the sound. On the other side, Ino was supposedly dead, so they married the next week, and he adopted Gray as his new son, and Gray accepted him easily as his father, mostly because Gray was at boarding schools most of the time, and knew nothing about father-son relations.

"four men groups, I got it!" he said to Tsubakauro "Karen, Hob, Doro and Shally will be group… what number it is? Group 13 of the sound" he said in victory, it was balanced, 2 sound nins and two ex-leaf, two boys and two girls, "who should we assign as a jounin instructor?" Tsubakearuo asked, they needed someone trustworthy, after all, the jounin instructor will be in charge of Uzumaki Karen, and he will learn about her heritage, which was a secret until now to anyone other than those who were in the leaf, and they didn't talk about it.

"what about Sarg?" Sasuke asked "bad idea, Sarg's too strict for them, he can work well for Tack, 13 instructor should be someone who knows how to deal with demon power, we can't ignore the reports about demons anymore, Ealla got back last week from a scouting mission, I think she can be a good teacher" Tsubakerou said, Sasuke just nodded, Ealla was a fine shinobi, she was smart and strong, she was never afraid of anything and was eager to see everything, team 13 was special enough to interest her so that she'll train them.

"can't you keep your pet away from mine?!" Hob cried in anger, Shu-al was harassing his dog, and Shu-al was much bigger and was scary, not that he'll allow Karen to know he what he thinks, "just shut up… come here shu-al, don't try to eat that puppy, he probably tastes as bad as he looks" she said in a tired voice, she had Shu-al ever since she was young, and now he was her only family.

"Someone's coming, lets try to act like a team now, o.k?" Doro said, his ears picked up the sound of the door closing but no footsteps, it meant that a good shinobi entered the building, so it had to be their Jounin instructor, "idiot, she's already here, she snuck in through the window ten minutes ago, I thought that at least you'll notice" Shally said in disappointment, even if Doro looked good, she wanted someone smart to be with, no just looks, though it didn't hurt.

"yep, I'm here, and you guys are really boring, like what are you thinking about? I expected to be discovered by all of you, especially the dog kid, but I guess that's what you get when you train losers like the four of you" Ealla said in boredom, "well, we should introduce ourselves, I'll start: my name is Ealla, I'm at my mid twenty's, I have a lot of hobbies you're too young to know about, and that's about all there is." She said while looking at the four, the first impression was very important.

"my name is Shally, I joined the sound when I was a baby, basically I want to be a good shinobi and see the world, I love traveling and hate explaining myself to stupid people"

"I'm Hob, I wish to be a great shinobi like my father and to be an ANBU one day, I love walking my dog and I really hate cats and people who don't know when to let go"

"Doro, I'm named somewhat after my uncle, my goal is to be the sound kage one day, and to make everyone see how great we are, I hate people who stick their noses where it shouldn't be"

"they seem to be quite the normal bunch, I guess they can be fun" Ealla thought to herself, "what about you, the name is Karen, right?" She asked the last girl in the room.

"yes, I'm Karen, anything else?"

"well, likes, dislikes, goals to the future, anything?" Ealla asked

"Nothing really"

"well, I'll see you all in three hours at this spot, we're going to have a night train, if you fail it then you go back to the academy, got it?" Ealla announced the exam terms, it was planned to be a test of teamwork, they'll have to work hard, mostly because she knew all their abilities and they knew nothing about her. But now she had to go meet the sound kage and discuss the teams, he said that she has a special team, Ealla hadn't seen anything that could imply it, but she still kept her hopes.

"what I'm about to tell you is a top secret information, if you choose to hear it you'll pledge yourself to that team, and refusing to train them will be counted as a personal crime against me" Tsubakarou said, "I see, I assure you that I have no intention of leaving the team, I know my duties well" she answered, she looked at the man besides her, it was Uchiha Sasuke, the official representative of the ex-leafs at the sound village, "if he's here, it means it has something to do with either Hob or Karen" she thought to herself.

"Very well, we chose you as their jounin instructor because of your past experience with demons, we have a valid reason to believe you'll encounter at least one wherever you take them" Sasuke said, Ealla was surprised, she had met demons over the past few months, most of them were just small beasts, with the inelegance of a wild animal or so, but she met also a few who were geniuses of battle, she barely escaped the last fight alive, so she knew that demons were varied from weaklings to super powerful death machines, and even those were nothing compared to the true demons, monsters such as the Kyubi and the monkey king, which were higher beings that came to play with civilization once a while and to kill what they could, but the rumors stated that some of the demons were finally really dead, at least that was good.

"Why do you believe that?" she asked them, "It's because Karen's father held the Kyubi, and by shu-al behavior, it's highly possible that she carries a part of him as well" the sound kage answered.

Karen was walking back home, she held a cup of instant Ramen, Ino gave it to her, Gray had his survival test at the morning, so he planned to take his brother out and train a bit with him, "I'll see you later, Karen, good luck" they said to her, Karen knew it was a fake, Ino has always watched her like a bomb going to explode, and Gray just thought she was annoying, but his father asked him to watch over her and hang out with her, just so she won't be lonely.

She looked at the Ramen cup she held, it disgusted her, everyone thought she liked Ramen for some reason, she watched the noodles spin, it reminded her of her father, she remembered how he was always doing stuff, she never saw him focusing his entire concentration on anything, even when he was making dinner or cleaning the room, he always found the time to complain about something, she felt a tear forming at her eye, "you basterds…" she whispered to the Ramen, remembering how both her father and mother left her alone, she was rescued by Ino, her father and mother never survived the attack, nobody talked about them anymore, when she asked Sasuke about her father he just answered they were good friends, he avoided any of her questions about what happened to him, "you'll never leave me, won't you?" she turned to the fox.

The fox was sleeping there as usual, but this time two other beasts were there as well, she looked at them, they were bigger than normal dogs or wolves, they had black fur and red eyes, even though they were standing in the light column, they had no shadow, she looked at them, trying to figure out what they were, she looked at Shu-al, words exploded in her head: lowlifes-weak-soldiers-peons-subordinates-meat shield-slaves. But from all the words, she liked only one: "expandable".

Well, since this is the first time publishing, I'll give you the treat of an extra chapter!


	2. New Old Friend

Chapter 2: New Old friend

She focused chackra to her hands, a quick seals and her hand had claws, she slashed through the first beast, she felt the bones shards cutting her skin, their dark red blood was spilling out to the floor, the first body collapsed, the second beast looked at Karen with awe, but she was too thrilled from the excitement to notice his expression, she punched him, her fist connected with the beasts' skull, she felt a slight pain as her claws pierced the bone, the holed that she made were spitting blood like steam, she heard another voice 

"that was too messy even for you, did you lose the small muscle in side your head which you humans call brain?"

"where are you?" Karen looked around in surprise, only shu-al and the bodies were there, "what happened to your voice? Someone sterilized you, Nartuo? It makes sense, I was asleep and you can't handle yourself without me…"  the voice said in a humorous tune, "who are you?!" Karen shouted, none was around her, and shu-al was looking at her in a curios stare, the blood of the two beasts started to vaporize, but Karen didn't mind it, it only meant she won't have any cleaning to do. 

"Wow, luckily for you, Naruto, demons can't keep a body without chackra, so Hinata won't know about the two Inu-injiyuu's" (AN\\:based on Inu-yasha and Hunter X Hunter, it means dog shadow beasts, or something like that)

 "but why did you use Henge, are you and her trying some new bed play? Got bored already… you humans just can't appreciate mating…" the voice was amused now.

 "Where are you? Who are you? What are you talking about? What do you mean by Naruto and Hinata!" Karen cried, the only thing she was told about her parents were their names, Hyuga Hinata and Uzumaki Naruto, she preformed some seals and looked around, other than shu-al, nobody was close to her. Her Byakugan should have revealed anyone around her, she was sure of it .

"that's a bloodline ability… I think I'm going crazy, who are you?!" the dark voice was now confused, he asked in somewhat scared tune.

 "I'm Karen Uzumaki, and once I find you you'll be a dead as anything can get" she growled with a smirk, she was a bit more secure now that the voice reveled some confusion himself, "you're Karen Uzumaki you say?… now that's bad, really bad, from the our height compared to the fox's height and the pressure on our forehead, I can guess we are above 12 years old, damn, it's going to be embracing, go get Naruto now, he'll explain everything to you"  the voice said, now it was plainly worried, "father is dead, and so is mother…"

 Karen tried to say, but she couldn't finish the sentence, tears started to flow down her face, she always tried to avoid thinking about them, she wanted to forget about them, about the way they smiled at her, about the way they took her everywhere.

"Now that's bad… we used to be fri… never mind that, I knew them, how did it happen?" he asked, she could have sworn he was crying as well, whoever he was, and wherever he was. "8 years ago, when the leaf was destroyed by the demon fox, they both died… or so I'm told" she tried to get her tough act on, she whipped her tears away, but then the doorbell rang.

"Listen to me, I'm not sure what happened, so I'll take a day or so to get my mind clear on some things, wash your face, get your cold act back on, I'll watch and try to learn the situation, tomorrow I'll try directing you to someone who can explain everything, and for next time, I can read your thoughts, so if you have a question, just think it, no need to say it loud" the voice said, he sounded almost… comforting.

"are you inside? Karen? It's me, Doro, I thought we should go to the mission together; we need to be there in twenty minutes" she heard the familiar voice, "sure, just give me time to get ready" she responded, she threw some stuff into her backpack, she changed into her nin suit and walked out the door. 

"wow, she changed inside and she was exited,,, man I'm hot!" Doro said to himself, his advanced hearing had other than shinobi mission uses, such as hearing the delicate sound of clothes falling to the floor, "anything wrong?" Karen asked him, "oh, no, nothing lets go, I don't want to be late, Hob is probably already there, and Shally must have been spying that place all afternoon" he said quickly, trying to hide his blush, "oh, sure" Karen said, even with a more non-interested voice than  usual, her thoughts were still about the voice who talked to her.

They got to the meeting place soon, Hon and Shally were there as they expected, but Ealla was nowhere in sight, "it's about time for her to come, isn't it?" Hob asked, he looked at his clock, 10 minutes after the due to arrive time, the only thing besides them was a box sitting on the table. 

10 more minutes passed,  and another 10, and soon they realized that their jounin instructor was late by two hours, "I'm getting really bored, I wonder what's in the box" Doro said, he picked the box up, for his much surprise, it didn't explode, he shrugged for a few seconds and listened, the sound of light paper was in that box, he quickly opened it and read the note loudly:  
"Dear Team 13, as your jounin instructor, I have to test you, so the first mission is the following: you are to find me and attach one of the charms to my body, the charms inside an envelope on the other side of the table, in order to help you get started, I'm wearing a bell, if you mange to get a charm on me then you keep the rank of genin, otherwise it's back to the academy."

 As he finished reading the letter, a shadowy figure jumped through the window, breaking it to pieces. "did anyone notice she was here?' Hob asked, he didn't like the fact that his strong sense of smell was taken away from him, "no, but there are quite a lot charms here, at least that" Doro said.

 "That's' because she wasn't here, idiots,,, that was genjutsu, she broke the window with a needle to make it seem like the illusion was real, and plus that, the needle's shadow fell over a shadowy area, so we won't notice it, she's really smart, but it means she's somewhere around" Shally said in self importance, she liked pulling those speeches, it impressed everyone she knew. 

The four genins jumped out the window, Hob was trying to catch her smell, Doro tried to hear the bell she wore, Shally looked at the window, she had a feeling she missed something important, but she didn't know what, Karen was puzzled, she didn't know many jutsus other than the ones they learned in the academy, and she had no talent in tracking, she was at the mercy of luck.

"you're so evil… leaving the kids to look for you all around, while your husband takes you out to dinner" Konhamaru said to Ealla, "oh, don't be like that, I'll go check once a while on them, and in about two hours I'll go back and play a bit with them, besides, it's not like they'll get bored, I left them quite enough of traps to keep them company" she said in somewhat laughter. Konhamaru changed his tune "on serious matters, Karen is at your team, isn't she?" 

Ealla nodded, her husband was also an ex-leaf, "yes, why do you ask?" she didn't know what he knew about the situation, and she didn't want to scare him with any new information "don't worry about it, every adult who came here knows about it, even if they aren't sure about Karen, they all know what happened with her father, and they suspect she might be the same, just keep it in mind" he said and then started with his cheerful tune again.

 "did you notice how every year the main theme of the survival exam stays the same and yet no one figures it out?" he asked, "yep, like what's so hard understanding that the main thing about a TEAM is TEAMwork?" she said in humor, she hoped she left enough clues to get them to see it, she guessed that the two girls will be the first to team up, as non of them had tracking skills, the boys would have troubles, as they will probably fall into each and each one of her traps…

"Damn, another rat with a bell attached to him, I'm getting nowhere, and I thought that I had something, stupid falsified traps…" Doro complained to himself, it was the fifth animal he caught and the third shurikan which was aimed at him, he dodged it easily, but only to meet another of her traps, a simple leg catcher, the most embracing trap ever invented. 

"did she just dump her entire closet here?" Hob asked in frustration, his nose lead him to another sock, and this one was set on a trap hole "is she trying to make me look stupid? Only amateur leveled traps, and somehow I keep falling into them" he rumbled to himself, "yes, I know I'm getting nowhere, but I have no other idea" he growled in response to his dog stare.

"aren't you going after her as well?" Shally asked, seeing the two boys leave in two opposite directions, "no need to rush it, unlike those two, I don't have a way to find her fast, so I need to take my time, what about you?" Karen responded, it would be quite a disappointment to her if she got thrown back to the academy, not that being a shinobi was her dream, but it was a rule for her never to fall back.

 "Same thing, I have the feeling I missed something, good luck any way" Shally said, "yeah, you too" Karen tried to smile, she entered the forest, after 300 meters she decided she was far enough to use her ability "Byakugen!" she looked around, she saw Shally at the start point, Doro and Hob were running like crazy people, probably following fake clues that were planted for them, "you here?" she whispered, "yes, I'm always around, and you don't need to talk loud, I'm a part of you, do you want something?" the voice asked.

 "you never told me who you are, or why can I talk to you" she said, "it's for a reason, we better wait until this training is over, it won't be easy, and I still have some things to figure out for myself, things have changed since the last time " the voice responded, more in a sad tune than his normal all knowing voice, "that's no fair, a voice that only I can hear, isn't it the mark of the insane?" she thought to herself silently.

 "don't worry, you aren't going crazy, but I do have a question, why is your byakugan ability so weak? Your mother was able to do even 4 times the distance at this age, and she was considered a disgrace to her clan…" the voice asked in curiosity, "it's not my fault, Sasuke-sama knew only a part of the seals, and there wasn't anyone else to teach me" she twitched as she remembered the time that Sasuke has shown her the seals, he said that he just happened to pick them up once, they weren't of any use to him, it was just another part of the mystery which clouded her origin.

"Sasuke-SAMA? Uchiha Sasuke? Isn't that asshole dead? For like almost 20 years?" the voice pronounced the name coldly, "Uchiha Sama is alive and well, and is performing his duties as the Kage's first officer" she responded, even if she thought Sasuke was an arrogant basterd, the Uchihas were the closest thing to a family she had, and from what Gray once said, it was because Sasuke insisted on it, "Sasuke is the first officer? So who's the kage? Itachi?" the voice asked with a laughter.

 "Ita-who? The current Kage is the Tsubakerou" she responded, wondering what made the voice ask all the questions, "oh, that guy, I can bet he's drowning himself with work, he probably works twenty hours a day on the smallest things" he said, amused from the twist of fate, "you know him? Who the hell are you?" Karen almost screamed, "oh, never mind me now, this talk has been going for too long, you have this test to pass, have fun" the voice said, returning to his slumber of thoughts.

Shally looked at the ground, trying for the third time to see the trap which flanged the needle into the room, it was either a trap or that Ealla was outside as well, and if that was the case then Hob would have smelled her when they left the room, she got into the shadowy part of the garden, with no light she had to feel the ground with her hands "ooch!" she hissed as she was stabbed by a glass shard.

 "glass shard? Stupid, Stupid, Stupid me! How could I miss it?" she was hitting herself mentally for the failure to notice the important fact that the glass was broken to the outside, and that meant that the needle was just to confuse them, the real trap mechanism was in the room, she climbed back to the window and looked outside, trying to calculate where could Ealla hide the needle that really broke the window. She sidestepped the wall.

 in front of her was an electricity pole, something shined suddenly on the pole, she jumped down and walked towards the pole, she climbed it easily and counted the number of power lines, 6 on the left, to the next pole, and 7 lines were in the direction of the building, "so that's how she done it,,, sneaky bitch, this much fuss about nothing" she pulled the extra line, a needle flew to her hand, she grasped the needle and saw it wasn't an ordinary needle, it was made of a different metal and it had magnetic qualities.

Well, review and tell me what you think, o.k?


	3. The Showdown of Teamwork

Whoo hoo! 2004 is here! Celebrations world-wide!

Oh, and yeah, another chapter…

Chapter 3: The Showdown of Teamwork

"so, you had any luck?" Hob asked Karen, Hob was officially desperate. Over the past two hours, he was assaulted by every non-fatal trap known to mankind, from trap holes to leg binders and up to a genjutsu maze of turning cubes, which was the worst.

"nothing, I don't know where to start, the entire area is booby trapped , did you get something?" she asked, even with the small time she spent on checking the surroundings, she could tell the small hints of traps, a broken branch and some turned up ground, "no, but I have a vast collection of old socks, but no pairs" he tried to sneak in a smile, but she was already examining the socks, "check this out, how do they smell?" she flashed the socks at him. 

"They smell like her perfume, lavender and orange, what about that?" he asked, "Who wears perfume on their feet? It's obviously a set up, she probably got this perfume just for this test" she said, angered by Hob's lack of shinobi thinking skills, "So you mean I was just running after nothing? Damn this sucks! So Doro is going to find her?" he asked, he and Doro always had a rivalry between them, both in ninja skills and about girls. 

"I don't think so, Doro is probably also following fake clues, I guess we should look for Shally and see if she has something" Karen answered. 

"Doro, get your ass over here now!" Shally shouted, she recognized the object she held in her hand, it wasn't a needle, it was one of those tuning forks, and she would bet her life on the fact it probably reacted to the bell Ealla was wearing, all she needed was to find Doro and have him trace the bell, and then she could put one of those charms on Ealla, luckily for the team, they had a large amount of charms, so they could plan alone according to their own ways. 

"this way, about 300 meters from us!" he whispered to Shally, they worked together now, as they got closer they saw her, she was reading a manuscript about some new threat for the shinobi society, a weapon that was easy to use and as deadly as a well aimed kunai, allowing peasants to carry weapons of that caliber would be a disaster.

"she's really focused on that, but she knows we found this fork thing, so she'll still be on her toes" Shally mentioned, "so, we somehow need to strike first with these charms, but she has chose a great spot to sit in, we can't sneak from behind her, we'll have to go in direct combat" he said firmly, his first step of becoming the kage began with this test.

"Crap, those idiots already got to her!" Karen cursed, "Stupid Basterd, I'm gonna kick Doro's ass when I catch him, no way I'm letting him act high & mighty on me" Hob agreed, his dog lead them into the forest, they saw their jounin instructor with the paper, Hob smelled that Shally and Doro on the other side, "what do we do? Are attacking now or waiting?" He asked, he wasn't a coward and definitely not afraid of a fight, but he was still smart enough to know he was outclassed. 

"we wait, when they attack, she'll have to show an opening at this side, and when she does, we both jump and put a charm on her back" she said, "but, there is a problem, they might be thinking the same, and we'll end up waiting for each other to make the first move all night, and she'll be bound to locate us sooner or later, if she hasn't already done it" he said, the situation was getting too complicated for him, he hated it when things got out of his league, "I know, we can't do nothing now, so you go and check if she has an escape route and if it's trapped" she commanded, he followed her order immediately. 

"so what should I do?" she asked inside her head, directing the question to the voice inside, "oh, no. you wouldn't ask me to help you with this, it would be cheating, you'll have to learn it by yourself" he said quickly, "don't play games with me, you better spit out what you know or else…" she responded in anger, "cool down, you idiot, someone with ou… your kind of power has to keep his emotions at control, you just released enough power to allow her to find you, and even worse, the Inu-Injiyuu will also follow it"  he almost shouted at her.

 "those demon things… they are drawn to chackra?" she asked, "well, not exactly, but it'll be safe to say that whenever you release chackra, they'll come, I think there are other factors involved as well, but I'm not sure yet". 

Two hours passed, no one the pairs had made their moves yet, Ealla noticed them and knew of their position already, "crap, they are stuck in the same spot, if they can't figure it out themselves I'll have to call them out" she thought to herself while checking the time at her clock, she took out a blue object from her backpack. "it's bad, you know what it is? That's a time candle, the blue ones burn down within 20 minutes, and that is our time limit to this test" Shally said.

 "that's bad, and I can bet Hob and Karen don't know that information, so it means we'll have to make our move first" Doro said in anger, because of their knowledge over Hob and Karen they'll have to lose their opportunity.

 "What is it?" Karen asked, Hob was suddenly sniffing the air uneasily, "that candle has to mean something, Doro is now pumped with adrenaline, they seem to be planning something, when they act, it's our queue to move in" he said, "exactly, give your dog one of the charms, we'll use him when she dodges them, it's the best chance we have against a jounin" Karen ordered, "when I give the signal, we go in, an all out battle with everything we have, I'm not going back to the academy" she continued, "deal, I won't let that dumbass Doro patronize over me". 

The candle was burnt halfway through when Shally released the wave of shurikans, they all stuck into the tree as Ealla quickly dodged them, "not yet" Karen whispered to Hob.

 Doro was the next to act,  three Doros stormed the jounin instructor, "Bunshin? You make too much mistakes on it!" She laughed at him, "you'll see, just eat the bait" Shally thought to herself, "Mistakes? We both know we you can't tell the real me!" Doro shouted at her, "I hope it's good enough, the plan won't work if unless she attacks" he thought, "Learn to respect your elders!"  Ealla said as she jumped at the left Doro, "Hob, this is our chance" Karen said and started moving, the dog was already at his way. 

"Don't you know… that my bunshin no jutsu is limited to one clone?" Doro whispered to Ealla, she looked right just to see a clone transforming into Shally, who was holding a charm at one hand and a string in the other, "no way to escape" Doro continued, his bandages were warping around Ealla's legs. "well at least they have teamwork" Ealla thought to herself in despair, her whole reputation as a badass jounin will be ruined, she looked around for someway to escape the string with the charm, her salivation came in the form of a dog with another charm in his mouth, he was running towards her.

 "Come dog, and now I can even shout at them" she whispered to herself with a hint of smile. "go, dog, go!" Hob screamed in joy, his distraction might end up putting the charm on the target, "don't let her escape" he continued, his hopes were crushed when he saw his jounin instructor capturing the legs of his dogs and spanned her body, sending the dog into a clash course with Shally's charm. 

"My chance!" Karen said to herself, she changed her legs with her metamorphism no jutsu into an animal like vulgar form, it gave an advantage at jumps, which in that moment, she used to get to Ealla, she tried to strike the jounin with her hand, but Ealla grasped it centimeters before it connected with her body, "lost your chance, ha?" she smirked to Karen.

 *BANG* 

the candle has burnt himself down, "Time up" Ealla said, she landed and headed to the spot with the candle. "the four of you, our training is over" she said, the sun was going up from behind her, "get your asses here, I'm going to conclude this test" the four genins jumped walked slowly to the spot, and she started her speech.

"None of you managed to get a charm on my back"

[not that you were expected to]

"it took you 6 hours to get to me"

[2 of which you spent on waiting at the room, 2 on the search for me and another two waiting for the best opportunity to attack]

"you separated yourself and went against a superior enemy alone"

[and organized into pairs afterwards]              

"you got into each others way and disrupted your teammates for ago"

[you used openings from each others attack]

"normally, you would have been disqualified, but due to the new rule of the Kage, I have to train you for a month before sending you back to the academy"

[I won't ever let you slip from the sound, too much potential to go unnoticed]

"and we are low on genin teams, so you'll be genins for a month, and only then your statue will be decided"

[if you can keep working like you did now, you'll get to chunins in no time]

"you four must be tired from jumping around uselessly, you should rest at home, and meet me in 10 hours from now, I'll tell you about a genin responsibilities"  
[I'm going to fall to bed right now, luckily the candle burnt out, else I would be toast]

"I'm so tired… I just want to sleep now!" Karen said, the four genins walked tighter back to the village, "no you're not" the voice came from her head, "I need you to check some things, it won't be long, go to the village library" it commanded, "now? It's 5 in the morning, I can't read anything now, I want to sleep" she argued with him, "DO IT! it won't take long, all I need is a twenty minutes" he said, "listen to me, I'm going to sleep now, so leave me alone until you can come up with some better excuse" she stated firmly.

 "o.k, so hear this, if you'll do this, I'll help you become the greatest ninja in the village, like I helped your father" he tried to barter, "I don't give a damn about it, but I might consider it if you tell me who you are, and what connection do you have to my parents" Karen insisted, "you got yourself a deal" the voice said in victory, he was already planning to tell her everything, he just needed to understand the new situation better.

YOO HOO! So many reviews to shout out (!) to, I don't remember the last time this happened!

So let's start with the ones from the last chapter of 'Shdow of life'

Eikou:

a. absolutely right, people don't like to read or see characters that they can't relate to, that's why I really don't like Sasuke.. about Kouga, I can't say he's my favorite, he's ok, but the problem is that Rumiko made him too much alike Kuno and Ryoga (in fact, that's the main problem in Inu-Yasha, she didn't get over Ranma yet…)

b. well, some people just consider pairings too much, it's necessary in a romance fic, but in a plot fic, it can sometimes be a hindrance, besides, authors should write what they think is best, and not leave it to voting..

c. I guess each writer has a style of his own, my stories start mostly with angst, and are never funny…. When I do write some humor story, it's usually a random blabble that you need to be me to understand, so obviously, I won't publish those…

d. I KNEW IT! I was sure you're a girl but then your comment about Bar Mitzvahs made me think you're a guy! When I was complaining about waking up at 8am at Saturday I meant each Saturday for a few months! You probably thought I was meaning a one time thing…

Craw:

Well, I don't believe in having the 2nd generation characters act the same way as their parents, it doesn't achieve anything… but still, I'm glad you liked "Shadow of Life" and I hope you'll enjoy the new story.

And for this story shout outs (!):

Eikou:

Hi girl! What's up?

Well, going through the names of everyone would be troublesome for me, but I'll do it anyway, it's just a partial thing, so don't worry.

Karen: Naruto X Hinata daughter, the name came from Kaiton (the name Naruto used at the last story to infiltrate as a Hyuga) which came from Kaiten (the heavenly spin of Neji).

Hob: Kiba X Shizune (tsunda's helper) second son, I wanted to use a name from wolf's rain, and I forgot for a second that Hob was the name of the human, and Hige was the name of the wolf, but still, I think it's a much better name.

Doro: Dosu (dead sound nin) nephew, I just like Dosu, and it seemed natural to have him around.

Shally: family unknown… I didn't want to put another leaf around, so I just brought in someone new, I wanted to use the name "Shira" but I decided against it, she'll have one or two chapters concerning her past.

Gray: Ino X unknown son, adopted by Sasuke, I wanted to use the name Gary (I just saw a Pokemon AG episode when I wrote it, and I tried to remember how Ash's rival was called) but I misspelled it Gray, which is much cooler, don't you think?

Tack: Sakura X Lee son, I knew his name has to have something to do with fighting, the Tack came from Tea Kwon Do, which is a martial arts I practiced years ago, but when I wrote him, I didn't know how to spell it in English, so I just wrote Tack…

Ealla: I was too lazy to think of anything, so I just dropped the R from Reilla's name…

Tsubakeruo: since he's from the rock, I wanted him to have a heavy name, he's name starts like Tsubasa, which is wing, but then falls down with 'kerou', so it gives it a heavy feeling…

Synaptix: 

Don't worry, like anything I write, this story will have too many twists that you'll soon forget how it started… and even I have no idea how it'll end!

I will NEVER write a Yaoi story, or even read one… don't worry about that! In fact, I review almost every non-shonen ai story I see in Naruto section so that the author won't stop, I call you to join the holy mission! Just kidding ofcourse…. The thing about Shonen ai around here is that only girls write it, I'd be surprised if there's one story that a gay guy wrote…

Shally is a mystery for now, lets just say she has a personality like a bit of shino and some Shikamaru with motivation..

Hattuteline:

Yep, lot's of new characters are hard, and me picturing them to you will be even harder, cuz I don't really write about their appearances… but I'll try my best to give you some idea, (see at the end of the shout outs [!]).

Karen's shyness comes from the fact she is the last living member of the Hyuga clan, and other than far seeing, she can't use the Byakougen for anything else. It wasn't stated anywhere that the actual Byakougen ability isn't developed someday (like the Sharingan), so she keeps the fact that she can use it a secret, because without the protection of the Hyuga clan, she has no defense in case someone will be after her eyes.

Personally, I just like the Kyubi too much to just dismiss him as a killer beast, so I can't write him too evil, and I end up writing him cynical… I know he seems a bit 'wussy' but remember, he has spent over twenty years actively being Naruto, so he can't go back to whatever he used to be before, so he just takes it on himself to become a new Naruto for Karen, besides, in my story, the Kyubi is the ancestor of all the Uzumaki family, so I can't have him ignore her completely. Can I?

Orochimaru is dead, Sasuke killed him at chap 13, the gay snake guy is dead! REJOICE!

Shadowmaster62:

Well, how can I not do a shout out (!) to someone who has one of my favorite words in his nick?

I'm glad that you can see the difference in the writing quality, I got a lot of reviews that it was a bit uncomfortable to read, so It's great to see it's getting better.

About a pre-reader, I don't really need one anymore, but if you still want to, then there's no problems..

Well, since you need to know something about the main characters, then I think I'll write a few words about one charter each week. So here's the first one, tell me what you think.

Name: Karen Uzumaki \ Hyuga.

Team: 13

Teammates: Doro, Hob, Shally, Ealla (jounin instructor)

Specialty: Metamorphism no jutsu.

Hair: blonde. Eyes: white. Often wears: Black. Hair style: not too messy, but not well attended.

Moto: "leave me alone"

Issues: Dead parents that she knows nothing about. Everybody expects her to act like her dad. Has the demon that killed her parents inside her.

Well, what did you think of Chapter 3? I know it wasn't that meaningful, but I hope it was worth reading!


	4. Secrets

Another week, another chapter, another bad opening phrase!

I usually start the story here, but today you'll hear me rant for a while and then the story will start…

I'm tired as hell. That's the first way to describe the last week, I can't sleep well, and my work out routine is killing me even when I'm not going to the gym,,, I sleep six hours a night and then catch up in class, which leads me to get stressed out about failing and I sleep even less.

On the bright side, I'm now officially closer to 17 than to 16, to bad it also means I'll get the first letter from the army soon, which is depressing.

I'm pretty sure I had more stuff to write about, but I forgot it all, so lets get on with the story.

Chapter 4: Secrets

"So, what do you say, Karen? Karen?" she heard Hob's voice, "say about what?" she asked, she was too focused with what was going inside her head to pay any notice to her group mates.

 "I asked you if you'll join us afterwards with a little surprise to Ealla, an humiliating surprise which will involve a bucket of paint, and a few powders that have a really strong smell" Hob said in pride, he considered himself to be a prankster, and when he was younger, he played tricks on Doro all the time, as he grew older, the pranks were much more calculated and rare, partly because his parent's reaction, and partly because it was hard to find new pranks to do. 

"oh, sure, sounds like fun" Karen said in tired voice, even if they were after a long tiring practice, her tone left no place to wonder, she was clearly not interested in the prank. One by one, team 13 genin's went to their homes, only Karen went to library, "good, take any history scroll which tells what happened the past 15 years, especially about the part where the leaf joined the sound, and pick up a scroll concerning chackra control while you're here, you need lessons in that immediately" the voice mentioned.

 "just remember what you said, you'll have to tell me about my family" she said, hardly keeping her eyes open and hardly pulling out the scrolls, "no problem, start going through the scrolls, just change the page every 20 seconds, it'll be enough for me" he stated. 

Karen followed his orders, and after ten minutes they were on there way out and back home, she was carrying a scroll about chackra control, the scroll was written by the top ninja's of the cloud village, and it was regarded as one of the best informational scrolls about that subject, due to the fact the authors described different states of chackra, including abnormalities such as high chackra leaking or suppressed chackra release. 

"So, was your trip to the library useful?" Karen asked, "I still have too much questions, but I think I'll need a first hand source to find answers, but going for it now will be bad for m… us" the voice responded "it's time for me to fill my part of the deal, we still have enough time for one question" he suggested.

Too many questions were going through her head, she wanted to know everything, but she was getting near her house, and she knew the moment she'll sit on her bed, the fatigue will take over her and send her to dreamland, she had many questions, but she decided to start with the most obvious and less important one "who are you?" she asked, already at her bedroom.

 "I'm called by many names, nine tails and fox demons, I am the Kyubi" the answer came to her mind, Karen couldn't believe what she 'heard' that moment, but the sleep took over her, sending the shocked girl into the land of dreams and nightmares.

"it can't be, stupid basterd" she cried, "huhh? Now this is great, you also have control over our dreams… your father was much easier to deal with" the kyubi stated in frustration, Naruto already knew about him before they met, and while Naruto was quick to take use of his chackra and power, the kyubi suspected that Karen was a different matter. 

"Why are you here? Are you invading my dreams as well?" Karen said, she, or a least her image in the dream, was growing repeatedly,  "well, it kinda goes the other way around, I'll try to keep this explanation simple, so listen well, you just started your missions and the whole thing takes time to get used to" he said, she just 'nodded' at him to tell her the story.

"so this is how it goes, about 43 years ago, the nine tailed demon fox, who is myself, has attacked the leaf village, the leader of the shinobies, the forth hokage, sealed the demon into a newborn baby, named Uzumaki Naruto, who in days, would become your father.

 To make long story short, the boy grew up and discovered me, faced a few challenges, lost his teammate to an enemy, and by teammate I'm talking about Uchiha Sasuke, and by enemy I mean the first sound kage, got kidnapped by his own mother, spent 3 years at captivity, then he got out, a year later he fought and killed one of the demons, ran away from the village, then he re-met your mother, after a few months they got married in less than legit ways.

 then the sound attacked for the second time, but was deflected, and your father killed the second sound kage, and my memory blanks out a few months later, for reasons you aren't in the age to know about, and in a situation kids never want to think of".

He concluded his story ((AN:\\ for the exact details, you should re-read Shadow of life, which this story is squealing. Like DUH!)), "so where comes the part the part you kill everybody in the leaf and forced them to move here?" she inquired, his story seemed to be so incomplete it was scary, "well, when you were 'formed' I was cloned into you, so I have no memories of what happened then, but I'm pretty sure the stories are far from the truth, I never was able to control your father, so I doubt the sincerity of them" he said with a clear voice, "my parents…" she started to ask, "would they be proud of me?", only the silence was there to answer her.

*****////////*********

"I don't understand why we have to do these stupid missions; can't we at least do something useful?"  Hob asked in frustration, the only thing which was worse than walking the dogs was to deliver cargo, and the difference was that Hob was used to walk his dog anyway. "Shut it, just keep that trio away from everyone else, if Shu-al wasn't there to stop them they would have eaten the small kid" Doro said. he looked at Karen's fox, he was twice the size of any other dog he ever saw, he looked like a tiger but he was still perfectly calm as long as Karen was besides him, "can't blame him… the amazing white eyes, the flowing hair.." 

He started to drown in his thoughts until a small rock met his head, "concentrate!" Shally's voice pierced his ears, "the faster we end the small tasks we can move to the real training" she silenced them all.

They finished the D-ranked mission by noon, they were ready to get the next list of assignments when Ealla said "it's about time we finished them! Now we can do some fun training!" she wondered how accurate in their abilities the kids were.

"so, what's the fun part you were talking about?" Karen asked, not letting an hint of emotion show on her face, she knew it made people freak out and do their best to avoid her, and that was the way she liked it. 

"for today, Chackra control, it's what makes the difference between an academy student and a genin" she threw 4 kunais near their feet, "Take them, it's now Chackra control 1O1, the good old tree climbing, 

when you can walk up the tree to the top, it means you might keep being a genin" she pointed at four trees, and walked towards another one, "this is your challenge" she did the first step on the tree, and steadily kept walking up, it was a necessity to any shinobi, no matter what operation was in progress. 

Ealla watched the four genins make preparations to start climbing, as she expected, Shally started by inspecting the tree she had walked on, with the amount of chackra Ealla released it was easy to distinguish the parts she walked on, Shally finally run to her tree, she managed to do three steps before she fell down. 

Doro was the next to try, with his super sonic waves family jutso, Ealla expected that he would have more chackra control than others, as those jutso required moving chackra through the air, he easily climbed five meters up but then he found out that the sound waves weren't fit to stay at the same place for long and he would have to release the chackra from his feet.

Hob just did the regular 'try over and over' thing, each mark by his kunai was an inch higher than the last one. 

What Karen did was the surprise to Ealla, the girl sat there with an opened scroll and just read it.

"Are you sure this is my case?" Karen asked in her mind, "yes, you're a rare case but an 'over output' regular, you have to find a way to keep your chackra inside and not let it outburst all the time" the Kyubi answered, she was a complete opposite from her father, in their personality, their goals and everything else imaginable. 

Where he was loud and annoying, she was silent and cold, When he wanted everyone to look at him, she wanted to be far away from the crowds, he was hell-bent on trying everything for himself, she learned from others, the only connection between them was the loneliness they never stopped feeling, "that's the bound between the three of us" he thought to himself.

 "Activate your Byakougan, and then try focus chackra to your foot, with you bloodline you could understand it in no time" he ordered her, "I don't see your point, I'm focusing the chackra but I can't feel any difference" she followed his directions, "Damn, your Byakougan is even weaker than I thought, you can't even see the chackra flows, you'll have to do it the normal way, try to release as much chackra as you can and then look at yourself, maybe you'll see it" He said.

{

"so, you say that I should hold her back?" Ealla asked in anger, it was the most stupid order she ever heard, even if the subject was anyone else she would have been furious, but to stop Karen from getting to her max power? It was unimaginable for her.

"it's not as simple as you think, if we allow her to become too strong the whole leaf crumbling will happen to us!' she didn't believe it, her own husband has sided with the Kage and the Uchiha, and knew that Sasuke and Konhamaru were good friends of Karen's father.

"What's wrong with you? She isn't her father, I don't know what went on with him, but it doesn't mean she would do the same" Ealla tried to argue, the Kage has ordered her to hold back the most promising team of the sound just because something that happened years ago.

"It's you who doesn't understand, I wish it wasn't true, but we all believed that Naruto is different, but in the end, he only finished the job that the Kyubi started, and we all know that she doesn't even have to try hard to let loose of that power" Sakura entered the conversation. All the ex-leafs were there, even Kiba agreed that group 13 should be held back until Karen was old enough to be assigned into a remote part of the world, he agreed even though he knew that it meant his son will also be hurt from it.

"I see" Ealla answered, "I see that you're all cowards and have no right to call yourself shinobies!" she continued in her mind, vowing to make Karen into the greatest ninja the sound has ever seen.

}

"I can't see anything" Karen complained, "damn it, I guess you have to do it the normal way, just try focusing to your leg like when you transformed in order to jump, but this time, release it like it is, don't bother to combine all the types in the right order, all you need is pure chackra" the Kyubi answered, he was amazed to see how useless her hyuga bloodline was, without the proper seals and guidance, it just gave her white eyes which alerted everyone she was a ninja. 

He decided that the only way for her to survive will be to go to the leaf hidden village, but it meant that both of them will have to confront the past.

---------End of chapter 4 – secrets--------

I had my ranting time before, so I'll just do the shout outs (!):

Per: Thanks, I sometimes read stories and in the end I think "why did I read that piece of crap?" (I already labeled the story pg-13, I can use crap and shit if I want to. J ) it's great to hear this story isn't one of those. About the story sounding like the real one, I have mixed feelings about that subject, I sometimes read 2nd generation stories in the Inu-yasha section and it seems like the author just changed the name of the characters, but sometimes it seems like the wrote a new story and just said 'X is the son of Z + Y', so it's hard to catch the 'real feeling' of an anime without being too expected.

Synaptix: yay, I only needed one try to spell your nick right! 

this story won't turn into one of those 'Kyubi teaches Naruto everything and makes him an ass kicker guy' stories, it's not that they are bad, but they can easily turn into "I'm cool" kind of story, so Kyubi will teach Karen some new stuff, but don't over expect anything on the new jutsu department. Metamorphism jutsu as a main jutsu? Never thought about that, I've used it only once or twice until now… I might start using that on the new chapters I'm writing, once I get my head set on the plot continuation… It's not that hard to read all the non-yaoi stories here,,, they are about only 20% from the total... And half of them aren't really worth it. I know Shally sounds a bit shallow right now, that's because she has two chapters focusing on her past very soon, so I don't want to spill it out now. If it makes you feel any better, I'm planning to post both of those chapters at the same day, cuz I'm not really sure about their writing quality. 

Hattuteline: Yay! I'm catching up to the nicks; I needed only one try for this one as well!

I can't really say much about the descriptions, I know my stories seriously lack them, I guess I'm not too sure about how everybody looks as well, but their relationships with each other should be much clearer… The sound village? That's another subject I've never thought about, I guess it looks a lot like the leaf, since Orochimaru created it, and he probably used the leaf as the model… anyway, it's another thing I'll try putting in sometime. 

Eikou:

Sorry for under appreciating you, girl, you had it worse than me, I only had to wake up at Saturday morning for about half a year… but seven whole years? And after school classes? I can't even begin to imagine… The fast pace is a problem with every story I write, it'll slow down as the story progresses, don't worry about that. There are a lot of details in order to confuse you, so when I drop the big plot bombs, you could go back and say "hey! There were hints that it was going to happen!" and stuff like that… the fic you've written, which section is it? you don't use a logged on nick, so I can't go to your profile and search it. As I said last week, I found out how Tea Kwon Do is spelled only last week, I've started working on this story about three months ago, and I'm too lazy to go through the story and replace every  Tack with a different name, even if I only need to press Ctrl F to do it. 

That's it for the shout outs (!), now for the character nin-card…

Name: Hob Inuzaka

Relation to original story: son of Kiba and Shizune (tsunda's apprentice, kiba just looks like the type to fall for older woman, doesn't he?).

Age: 12

Apperance: like Kiba, just with a less crude face and a more 'shining' black hair.

Hobby: pranks, being cool, dogs.

Likes: Karen.

Rival: Dosu

Dog: nameless, you can call him fang if you want, but I've never mentioned any name for him, just cuase I felt it'd be too much of a burden to remember such a side character name.

Specialty: powerful sense of smell, dog, I might have him learn a few healing jutsus, but I'm not sure.

Issues: not much, continues the line of being the average guy with the dog.

Well, that was one piece of non-important information, if you have a specific character you want to see next week, tell me about it!


	5. Call for relatives

I'm tired, I'm depressed, I'm failing at literature and English, and all my noir files don't work…

Yep, that's this week ranting… I'm might be less tired than last week, but I feel twice as bad!

Why? Because I didn't go to the gym at Sunday, I had a dream that people are yelling at me to go already, it was very creepy, so I went on Monday, but I didn't feel good so I only did 3\4 of what I'm supposed to do, and it was the only time I went this week, and I should be going there 3 times a week.

Second thing, I got my English test back yesterday, it was a mock exam to the finals and I got 63, which means my bitchy teacher won't let me take it this year and I'll have to study English another year, which really sucks! And I also need to hand over some stupid project about something, but I have no fucking idea what to do with it…

Third thing, I'm suffering from a writer's block, for the past whole month! I only got about half a chapter done, so my reserves are dying quickly on me.

It was about enough ranting for one day, so here is the story..

Chapter 5: Call for relatives

Karen looked at the name over and over, there was no mistake about it, even though the demon within her said he never heard about her, Karen knew she had to meet that woman, the scroll contained only scarps of information about her, but Karen could still gather enough knowledge about her from everyone else who came from the leaf, she decided to solve the mystery of that woman, she swore to find out who was Uzumaki Reilla.

"it says she comes from the cloud, are you sure it's not just a coincidence?" Shally asked, their was no chance that Karen would happen to have a long lost relative and nobody would tell her about it, "besides, the cloud is far away, a families don't travel those distances" she laughed inside of her, her mother was from the rock village, she told her that under an unfortunate turn of events she had to run away from it, her mother vowed her not to allow anyone, even her father, to learn about their bloodline, the promise was easy to keep as the uses to the bloodline were rare, even her mother had troubles recalling the last time it has been put into real use. 

Nevertheless, Shally always had the itch to use it when she saw her friend, it was like it was calling for her, to create the seals and to let the power wage around, to release the hell from within her and to let the inner demon loose. "maybe you should ask Uchiha Sama or someone else from the leaf?" Shally suggested.

 "No use, if they would want me to know about it, they would have told me long time ago" Karen answered.

*************The leaf Hidden Village*********

"Who are you, woman?" the man asked the approaching character, the man was born and lived on that ground, after the disaster struck, he decided to stay there and become the guardian of the land, he asked the rest of the survivors to take care of his niece, he couldn't stand to be around her any longer, he was both ashamed and afraid at the same time, shame since he failed to protect her mother as he swore to, and fear as he saw her father at the girls face and knew that she could do the same.

"I'm the reprehensive for the cloud, the Reikage has sent me to prepare the ground for the chunin exam" she answered, staring into the man's eyes, she recognized him as an Hyuga, it was her second time visiting the leaf, and the first time she was there after what happened, over the past years she avoided asking or trying to investigate the reappearance of the Kyubi, it was a mystery she couldn't let go off and still she couldn't drive herself to face it.

"so, the five Kages have realized that the shinobies heritage wouldn't last for long now, the only way to keep us valuable now is to convert ourselves to demon hunting?" her face brought back memories from his brother in law, the blond hair and beast-like smile. He couldn't stand to look at her for long, he only wished that she wouldn't ask about the child, he hated himself for leaving her alone, and hated the fact that in few months or years, he will have to meet her.

"so this is the place where the Kyubi remerged, I guess his container is dead, what about Naruto's Family? Are there any survivors?" Reilla asked the Hyuga. "Karen is still alive, she lives at the Sound village now, Sakura, Sasuke and Ino should be watching over her" Neji answered.

---------**************----------

"can you believe this? It's only been two months since we got promoted to genins and they're already thinking about the chunin exam!" Gray was thrilled with happiness and excitement; he knew he could never gain the Sharingan eye, but he still vowed to make his father proud.

 "Don't get all over yourself, they just said that this is a small teaser for the exam, they think that some of us might decide to give up on the chunin, but still, the fact that we are allowed in this training doesn't mean we'll even be suggested for the exam" Doro responded, all the genin teams were in this training together, and Doro found himself with an ex-leaf and another sound instead of being with the girl of his dreams.

 "you better not be taking advantage of this, Hob" he cursed his teammate in his mind.

"What kind of thing do you think it is?" Tack asked the two girls, they were informed that a summon has failed and now an unidentified summoned creature was on the loose, the jounin instructors only said that the thing was about 90 centimeters and was intelligent enough to be counted as a C-ranked mission. 

Karen didn't answer, she knew exactly what creature was the target, a customized demon, created in the image of another, that was how the Kyubi described them, she learned much more on demons on the past two months than in her whole life, and she suspected that she was the most knowledgeable person in the village about that subject. 

"How should I deal with this one?" she asked inside her head, "you aren't the one who is going to fight it, it would make you look too suspicious, leave this one for the rest" the Kyubi answered.

Shally looked to her left side, her eyes twitched when she looked at one of the branches; it was the same kind of twitch that she felt when she saw Karen. She took a glimpse at her two friends, Tack was talking nonsense and Karen was in her own world as usual, Shally decided it was safe and performed the seals, a wave of new senses has crushed her.

 everything was pitch gray to her, she felt numb all over her and the sound of the birds was nothing more than a scratch in her ears, she was about to let go of the blood ability when she turned to the branch again, then she saw it.

Two eyes stared at her, she began to see color whirling outside those eyes, the colors soon took over the entire body of the creature, Shally couldn't begin to describe all the colors, it was a wonderful mix of all the rainbow colors and much more, then she heard a growl, to her, it was like heaven – a thousand symphonies banged her head, each one with a unique voice that contained all the feelings that she had ever felt, each heart pulse of the creature was a new melody, after a second she smelled the scent of it, the smell was addictive, like sniffing the very essence of life, she stared at the demonic summon for what seemed like hours, and she  knew that she has seen true beauty.

"ahh, Shally, what's wrong?" Hob asked his teammate, she was standing on a branch in a bizarre position, like she was frozen in her movement, her head was set locked on a tree forty feet from her, he looked at that direction, his eyes confronted a hellish looking dog, that in some ironic way, smelled like the girl of his dreams, "found it!' he shouted when he jumped towards the tree, he heard footsteps behind him and saw Gray and Tack following him.

"Where is it?" Gray shouted, he was already holding out a shurikan with a string attached, he planned to capture the thing, he was sure that would make his father feel proud.

All of the demon's instincts has told him to run, his mind was fairly simple, one mission was imbued inside it, surveillance, he knew that he failed his invisible master, he jumped between the trees he saw three humans after him, one of them held a slight resemblance to someone in his past, but the demon dog didn't have time to think about it, nor did he have enough self conscience to even consider thinking about issues which didn't hold direct contact to his goal. 

He was almost at the wilderness when he realized that one of the boys has been pursuing from the ground and closing in on a frightening speed, the boy has got to the trunk of the tree that the demon was on, and punched it, the tree has begun to shake, and the dog demon knew that it was his end, with the chackra erupting out from the tree, he knew that he'll lose his balance and fall down to the earth, but still, The red furred dog decided it was a better way to end his life than to return back home.

"good one, Doro!" Tack shouted, he threw the light bomb into the air and signaled to the jounins that the creature was defeated, smashed to the ground. His eyes widened as the beast's body begun to vaporize, first the skin, then the meat and the bones were last, leaving no sign of the creature's existent other than the memories. "where's the body?" Ealla asked, despite her knowledge about demons, she could never understand how they disappeared without a trace, and she also needed to see the boys facial expressions.

 "I dissolved into thin air, don't know why" Tack answered, "as expected…" Ealla thought to her self, "gather everybody, tell'em it's over and that they will meet there jounin instructors in 20 minutes at their regular place" she said, all that was left to her was to try to imagine who was the dog and what connection did all the newly discovered demons have with the leaf village.

**************Leaf Village***********

"look out, for the right!" Neji heard the warning, a few years has passed since he saw his first demon, but Neji now noticed that each demon held an undeniable resemblance to someone, and this one was in a quite ironic way, an almost exact copy of himself.

"has it always been like this?" Reilla asked, her three nights at the leaf village ground were nothing else than demon exterminating, from the first dog like creatures to the demon she has just strike, Reilla knew who was the model for it, she heard about it from Naruto and even met him in person, it was the son of the previous Kazzakage, the sand's strongest – Garra.

"do you wish to see the source of them?" Neji suggested, if the Kages have planned to send 12 years old kids to the spot, they were clearly nuts in his perspective. The technological advancement has required the shinobies to reconsider their ways, more and more customers have decided to turn to the alternatives, snipers, armored carriages, tap wire-ring, they weren't a match to a good ninja, but their low price has convinced most customers to turn to them.

"the source, what is it anyway? She answered, the same thought passed in her mind as well, the village wasn't a place suitable for kids, it wasn't suited to anyone.

"we're here, the source of all the demons" he stated, they were under a cliff, stone was shattered down on the ground, but within it all, was a pool with an endless spin inside, she looked at the pool, deep under the liquid, she could see a face of a blond man with birthmarks on his cheeks.

From the behind the stones, another demon looked at them, he clinched his fist, chackra began to erupt from his hand, but then it settled down, as close as they were, they weren't his target, his target was far away at that time, but he knew she would come soon…

*****chapter five – end*******

yep, here is where the plot starts, I've brought back some old characters (Neji, and Reilla, both are Karen's parent's cousins), and there are new two details about Shally, the fact she came from the rock hidden village, and the fact she has a hidden bloodline. 

There is another character with the same attributes; I'll be sending an online metaphoric cookie to whoever guesses who it is…

What else? That's about it, so here's some shout outs (!) and after that there is some info about Gray.

Synaptix: Konohamaru was loyal to Naruto when they were kids, but a lot of things happened since then, including Naruto becoming a missing nin and destroying the leaf village, so he has some knowledge about getting too close… but still, I think I'll give him a bit more spot light soon.

And about Karen's strength, she will become much stronger soon, but don't think it'll change the mood of the story, it won't be one of those "I'm cool and I kick ass" stories, because no matter how strong anyone is, everybody has their own psychological issues.

Eikou: 

So, you're writing a shaman king fic? It's kinda funny, since I got the last 25 eps from a friend of mine last week and I'm going to finish the series tomorrow! So I could read your stories without being afraid of spoilers! And if we're speaking about shaman king fics, can you link me to a few good stories from that section? Cuz I'm really terrible when I'm trying to read any new anime fictions… I always fall on some messed up stories that I can't even understand…

I don't really dig most humor fics, a lot of them relay on stupid gags I've hated from the anime, while angst relays on making me feel bad, which is really easy!

No matter how you look at it, bible class is bad, I have a test tomorrow, and I don't know shit!

Trust me, the army is just pure EVIL, I've been in a pre army camp a few months ago, the food is worse than I've imagined, and I really hate waking up before the sun!

Anyway, I'll try writing a bit more today, but as said before, I just can't write latly!

Oh yeah, I got two reviews for shadow of life, so here are the shout outs (!):

GuyWhoCares:

Well, the Q&A section was there for the readers questions, but since I didn't get any, I didn't have much to write…

The deal with Hinata is yet to be reaveled, this story deals with it much more, but I won't say anything else!

HMR:

Well, this is kinda useless to write here, but SoL story ended and has a sequel, which is what you're reading now…so this whole shout out (!) is pointless.

Here's some information about one character:

Name: Uchiha Gray.

Connection to original story: Ino's son (father's name was never written down), Sasuke's adopted son.

Age: 13

Specialty: unknown. He stayed one year in the academy, but then become the #1 rookie.

Appearance: kinda looks like Ino's dad, just more of a child with some Sasuke attributes, a low ponytail blond hair like Ino's… 

Issues: one parent is making him hang out with Karen, the other doesn't really approve of it.

And since that was just useless, here's some more useless crap.

Name: Rock Tack

Connection to the original story: Lee and Sakura's son.

Age: 12

Specialty: kinda hard working type of guy, illusion knowledge.

Appearance: like Lee, just with pink Sakura hair, and a bit better fashion sense..

Issues: nothing really, he's the plain average guy you'd expect Sakura to be his mother.

Did you see how I managed to write so much pointless stuff on one chapter? But don't worry, the next chapter will have some implied yuri (which won't last long) and a really neat history of one character!


	6. Rainbow Eyed Obsession

Man, I'm just too tired…

Well, in times like this, I thank myself for writing chapters in stocks, I can slack off and nobody will notice.

To tell you the truth, I was finally over my writing block, and even started a new part of the story, but then, the unimaginable happened. My computer burned out.

Not the computer itself, of course, just the power supplier, so for the last 4 days I had to work from my brothers computer with my injected Hard Disk. It means I had no privacy to watch all the anime. And I couldn't even burn them down… that's just so annoying!

The story ended when I got a replacement power supplier. But I'm still too damn lazy to properly edit this chapter.

Other than that, I started reading Masion Ikkoku manga, which is really Rumiko-ish and fun, looks like Ranma in it's best form – countless misunderstanding, and one really unlucky dude, I just really like it. I don't know how good the anime is, but I think I'll pass, unless it's really good, and if so, plz inform me.

And last thing, next week I'm getting the report cards for the first half of the year, so wish me luck.

On with the story!

Oh, and by the way, this chapter has some implied Shogou Ai in it, and is a bit weird, but it's just this one, so don't worry if it sucks.

Chapter 6: Rainbow Eyed Obsession

"You o.k.? Shally?' Gray tried to talk with her, the girl has ignored everything, her whole existence has focused on the branch, tears flowed down her face like rivers, her eyes gazed down, trying to recreate what was lost, the spectacular view of the creature. 

"how long was she like this?" Ealla asked, she suspected that her subordinate has fallen to some demonic power that even she wasn't aware of, but it didn't make any sense to her, the demon was a simple minded one, not even strong enough to defeat a genin, and no smart enough to trick one away, him having powers such as this wasn't logical.

"how is she?" Karen asked, her voice ringed through Shallys mind, it wasn't much, but it somewhat reminded her of the demon howling, she looked at her teammate, and then she realized her eyes twitched at her sight just like when she saw the demon. "I'm fine, lets go" Shally answered, and swore to herself to see all the colors again, and now she just understood how.

---------------Sound Kage's office---------

"damn it, damn it, Damn IT!" he shouted mentally, the weaponry advancement has become so fast that it was now confirmed that even a high speed shurikan wasn't able to deflect a straight bullet well, he suspected it wouldn't be long until another immediate Kages conference will be held to discuss the changes that were becoming a necessity. 

"less students… less fighting… less villages… much less missions…" it was all a part of the industrial revolution, this year's Chunin exam was decided to be a full demon hunt, and Tsubakeruo feared that one particular girl might find more information on her origin, more information that could shake her whole world.

***************************************

"She's still there" Karen said in her mind, "what's wrong with that girl? I can swear that even when I dream she's there…" The kyubi answered, "those are my dreams, I doubt you can even dream…" she corrected the demon.

 "well, there was a time that I was able to dream… and besides, what's mine is yours, like my chackra and what's yours is mine, like the dreams and senses" he answered, all his hopes of being free were crushed while he was a part of her father, and now he was quite happy with his position. He never had such an insight at the mortal realm, most of his visits were just mass destruction and massacre, he had only one visit that was different, and that one has eventually led to his current state.

Shally hasn't let her eyes of Karen during the past week, she hasn't let go of her special sight as well. The old Shally would have fallen to the floor with laguter if someone would have said that she'll be spying on another girl's house day and night, but the new Shally didn't see anything wrong with it now, even if someone would ask her about it, she would just dismiss him, after all, nobody else saw what she saw, nobody else…

She saw the shadow of the door moving, she got up on her feet, she saw her target moving out, a wide spray of color flowed out of Karen when she looked at her stalker, but it immediately disappeared. Even that small flash was a heavenly experience for Shally, the sweet sound of the footsteps rushed down her core, she it was like a symphony of drums that never stopped playing.

 She saw some people staring at her strange behavior, but each time she smelled her target she found new meanings for her pursuit, even though, Shally knew that everything she felt at that moment, was just a small portion of what she could feel, all that she had to do now was to find out how make Karen project the rest of her… Beauty.

***********Shally's POV***********

White: she is white. White like her eyes, white like a cloud, white like her pale beauty, can she be whiter? Can I make her whiteness shine? Shine like light? White is calmness, she is always calm, she never gives in to anyone, she never allows nothing to escape. White is amazing, but still, white is only the start…

Pink: sometimes she's pink, not much, but when she looks at her fox, she is pink. She is pink also when the boys talk to her, pink is for those who like her. Is she pink when I'm around? What goes beyond pink?

Blue: she's allways blue, but she keeps it inside, she never cries or shows her blue side, but it's always there. I wonder where does her blue come from? Blue is beutifull, but what is the opposite of blue? If I'll talk to her more often, will the blue get stronger or will it become pink?

Violet: violet is for hurt, when she fails to stick to a tree, when she hits the ground, when she stabbed herself with a kunai, when she couldn't avoid that shurikan. Will the violet scream out when if I'll attack her? will it flow even more? How do violet and red look together? 

Red: red is two things, red is love and red is anger, sometimes it's both at the same time, what kind of red will she show if I would touch her? Will she be red with anger and try to strike me? Or will she be red with love and touch me as well? Red is the most beautiful side of her I ever seen, red is her essence, red is what makes her Karen, can I make myself one with her? Can I make her red spray on to me? 

Black: I've never seen Karen black, but I've seen the demon black, it was beyond words, black when the dog vanished into thin air, black when his blood turned into gas. What kind of black will Karen be? Will she black quickly without a trace like the dog? or perhaps she'll black for a long time until the end? If we're red and I would stab her, will the red turn to black? Or will the red and black flow out together? Should I try to bring the black out? Is black part of red? Or is the red a part of the black? Black is the ultimate best, red is only a foreshadowing of black, both of the reds bring the black, the black is the conclusion of life, black is what life leads to…

***************Sound Kage office*****************

"I'm sorry it happened, sis" Tsubakerou didn't use that word ever since he left the rock village and joined that Akatsuki, he knew how much she was hurt when he left, he wasn't just her older brother, he was her role model for the future. She wasn't only his little sister, she was also the one person that never tried to push him to do something. "don't be, you basterd, you have no right to be" she hissed at him, she hated herself for following his footsteps and leaving the rock, and she hated herself for following the false illusion that they could be a family again at the sound. And now she lost her daughter, and he could have prevented it!

"you make me sick, I don't want to see you ever again" she said once more, she held Shally close to her, the girl was chanting colors and feelings, it wasn't new, it was their curse of blood, they were instructed to keep it in check each second of the day, because one slip would bring the end of the person's sanity. Unlike other bloodlines, the Rainbow eyes didn't require seals to activate, the seals were what held the eye sight back. 

"what are you going to do?" the question rumbled down through her head, she knew what must be done, it was a necessity, when the proper treatment wasn't taken, tragedies happened, human sacrifices to demons in mass numbers, maidens offered on a daily basis to torture, every one of the cases where humans bowed down to demons was that bloodline fault, and now, her brother didn't protect Shally, and it meant the end of the girls life.

"I wonder how long is shally going to be on that mission" Doro asked, they were in a middle of a regular dog walking D-ranked mission, and the sound genin realized that he quite missed the girls attitude towards them all. "don't bother yourselves with it, she'll be back once it's done, its some family tradition, from what the Kage said, it varies between two months and a few years" Ealla said, she was confused as well about the disappearance, she knew that Shally didn't come from anyone of the sound's big families, and that even if she did, it wouldn't be such a matter to involve the Kage with. But still, the Kage has made it personal business, and made sure that everyone would know not to talk about it. 

"Anyway, next month is a special occasion! You get to go to the chunin exams!" she stated, she knew that both the boys will go wild from the declaration, and that Karen will follow, but Ealla couldn't help but wonder how will the girl deal with the demons which lurked in the ruins of the leaf village.

"tell me the truth, do you know what happened to Shally?" Karen asked the Kyubi, "… yes…"  he finally replied with hesitation, "tell me" she shouted at him, "I shouldn't, there's nothing you can do about it anyway…" he wanted to avoid answering, stories such as those ones were best kept away from kids of her age, "I don't care, tell me" she demanded.

 "Just remember that they had to do it…" the fox gave up "Shally comes from a special clan with special bloodline, not a really useful one,  it's more of a curse than of a blessing, it enables her to see demonic chackra formation, which is a thing that even the Hyuga Byakougan cannot do…

The problem is that demon chackra is addicting, one look at it and you're done for. Nothing can bring back someone after it, it originated with Shika, the deer demoness, she transformed into a human one day, she was shocked from the amount of love she received because of her beauty, but there was one man that didn't pay any attention to her, she got mad and returned to the demon realm, then the pig demon suggested that she'll kidnap him and torture him until he admits her beauty.

She returned to the mortal and did it, but then she found out he was blind and mute, so no matter what torture he would be under, he wouldn't say anything. She returned once more to the demonic realm, and then the butterfly demon suggested that she would mix her blood with wine and give him a blood transfer, of course the deer demoness followed the advice, since they were her best friends, as much as demons can have friends…

The blood transfer cured the man's condition but imbued him with a bloodline revenge, all of his descendants will see demon chackra and will submit themselves to it's beauty" he stopped the story for a second, allowing Karen to comprehend the story, he knew what question was going to follow, and he knew damn well what emotion will the girl carry inside her soul from now on: Guilt. 

"What really happened to Shally?' She asked, the fox sighed "she was taken to the same place her ancestor was kidnapped to; there she'll join an ageless cult of all the people who fell to that bloodline and will begin to pray for Shika's beauty until the end of times".

"great! The chunin exam will be in the leaf village!" Karen stated, it was rare for her to show her happiness, "what?" the nine-tailed fox screamed inside of her, it didn't make any sense to him, from his past experience with Naruto he expected that Karen will decide that she was the trigger to Shally's curse and torture herself with agonizing. Like Naruto did with Iruka after that failed mission, Like what happened with Sasuke and even Choji, Naruto considered all of them his faults, "I'll never understand mortals" he growled to himself.

-----Chapter 6 – Rainbow Eyed Obsession – End-----

well, I had my ranting time before, so he comes the shout outs (!)…

Synaptix:

Well, I don't like simple plots, the story will have enough twists to last for a lifetime, so stay tuned…

And the modern technology? It won't come up again for at least ten chapters, but after that, who knows? 

Eikou:  
Let's go by this point by point…

       Shaman King:  I finally finished it, it was pretty average, and I checked the SK section, it has so much yaoi that I'm gone throw up. And even if I could ignore that, there just aren't any good stories, which is really bizarre, since you can work almost any character into a major complicated life story. And no one really cares about Opacho anyway, his\her only use is to show us that Hao has really lost it in the end, and that it's "ok" to kill him now.

        Army: the training and the food aren't the real problem, it's just that I'm going to spend there 3 years of my life. No matter how you look at it, it's just too long.

        Studying tips: well, thanks for them; I'm going to try the 'drink a lot' thing, it sound like a good idea.

          Narutaru: well, I'm not going to deny that Houshimaru (the yellow\orange star) is the cutest thing ever created, and I don't go around saying kawaii on everything. But nevertheless, Narutaru is one messed up anime, and once you get past the third episode, then people start dying, but houshimaru is still cute. I don't think you can compare it to YGO, which is a just a pokemon-like anime, with the merchandising theme and the totally funny bunch of heroes, Narutaru is different.

Damn, that's all folks, read and review, the next few chapters are gonna be pretty messed up.


	7. House of the Dead

News flash… guess how I feel this week?

You probably got it right, this week I'm tired as hell!

And the more annoying part is that when I finally feel refreshed and good, it's in a day I have to go to bed early, for example: at Tuesday I felt like shit, but since I school started on 10 this Wednesday, I went to the gym, and did almost nothing cuz I was too tired. And on the next day, I felt real pumped up, but I couldn't go to the gym cuz at Thursday I start early…

That was one useless ranting… but what's even worse, I'm getting my report cards today (after I go to sleep and wake up, about 6 hours), which is a real bitch…

Oh, and I noticed that Chibi@Dragon has vanished from the reviwers list… so if you're reading this, make me know you're alive, I feel like only 4 people read this story…

Chapter 7: House of the Dead

"welcome to the Chunin exam" the woman said, she was from the sand village, she had sand-like hair and held a fan in her hand, "My name is Temari, your jounins have already prepared you to this test, so I'll make it short: this is a survival test, each one of you genins has one scroll, identical to that of his teammates, there are 4 types of scrolls, and to advance to the next test you must hold the four of them. Luckily for you, there are other ways to get the scrolls other than fighting other shinobies, those ways are varied and you'll have to find them yourselves. 

One last thing, the scrolls emit a special odder, which demons find highly attractive, your first mission right now is to survive the following 2 days. You can quit the test anytime you want by signaling your jounin instructor with the flash bomb which was customized for you, that's about it".

"Karen, want to go check out the place we're born in? I'll show you my old house!" Hob suggested to his teammate, he wondered how she could look so calm, Ealla said that most of the time the chunin test was taken in teams and only the ending round was a personal exam, but this time the exam was taken on a personal basis from the start. 

Hob sniffed the air, he could smell over 500 different people, and he knew that it meant that there were over 50 Special Forces members "are they expecting us to get into that much trouble?" he asked himself. 

"Maybe later, I want to check some things on my own, I'll meet you around in about three hours, you can show Doro if you want" Karen replied coldly, she looked at the ruined village, plants were growing from most of it, like a civilization lost in the jungle for centuries. 

Karen started to walk, on her way she saw other ninjas scouting around the wrecked village, there was a strange atmosphere in the air, none of the shinobies has started to fight yet, "it's because of the demons around" Karen decided, she could feel each the demonic chackra around her, she instantly knew where were the demons nesting places. 

"Searching for your past home?" a voice interrupted her thoughts, it was another one of the ex-leafs genins, he had a light blond pony-tail hair and was a year older than her. 

"Yes, I thought it'll be nice to see where I was born, what about you, Gray?" she asked back, "the same, just checked out the Uchiha compound and my mother's old place, the Uchiha place was next to the Hyuga and my mom's place was near the ninja administration, it's a mess all around, but most of the files were in a readable condition" she could tell he was exited, Gray wasn't a real part of the leaf, coming to the village gave him a feeling that he can recreate his past into something honorable that would fit his Uchiha name. 

"oh, cool!" she usually faked her declaration of excitement, but this time it was her true feeling, he gave her quite the information that she wanted to know, her main reason  for taking part in the exam was because it gave her an opportunity to learn about her parents old life. "Where are we going to start this tour?" the Kyubi tried to hide his own curiosity about what happened to the leaf, but he failed miserably, "we start with the offices, and I'll decide about the rest after I'll take every piece of information they kept about them" she calmed the anxious demon.

"They have a respectable amounts of paper on him, don't they?" The kyubi taunted Karen, "yep, a lot of them from Iruka and some by Kakashi, but all they all stop when he was fifteen…" she said, the reports contained quite a lot pranks and misdeeds that her father committed in his younger days, but all those stopped when he become a genin, from that point there was raising amount of reports of strange behavior, "what's this nine-tails power they keep referring to?" she asked. 

"well, I was sealed into your father, so our power's were separated, he could sometimes tap into my strength and use it, it started with uncontrollable bursts of power when his emotions heighten, but eventually he learned to control it. With you it's different; you were born with me as a part of your genetic material, so your chackra IS my chackra, and vice versa" the fox explained. 

"it's too long to read at once, there are too many questions, like why did my father have a crush on Tack's mom and how do they know about it?" Karen complained, it really didn't interest her, but she needed to start questioning him, and decided it was best to start from non important ones.

AN::\\  Q&A style! I just hate to write "she asked\he answered" over and over, so for this part, Karen is regular font and the Kyubi is _Italics_ .

_"he had a crush on Sakura because he was too much of an idiot to notice your mother, and they know about it because it's a chunin regular job to spy on an academy student and to hand a report about him once a while. Your father's chunin spy was switched around a couple of times, since most of them hated his guts"_

 "Reasonable enough, why did he got stuck with Uchiha in the same team?"

_"Naruto wasn't always the asskicker type of guy, he was the worst of the genins when he started, and Sasuke was the top rookie, so they balanced the team and stuck them both together"_

"Then why was Naruto transferred between all the teams afterwards? Was it because their team got too strong?"

_"No, teams aren't changed unless something BIG happens, in your father's case it was the fact the Sasuke deflected to the sound village and joined Orochimaru's Special Forces"_

"I really don't give a damn about that old fart's life story, I'm not even sure why I asked, how come all the reports from Iruka stop suddenly after this B-mission my father was in?"

_"hard story, Naruto and Iruka were assigned to this mission together, Naruto decided not to kill one of the enemy nins, but that ninja called for reinforcement and they caught Naruto and Iruka on surprise and managed to kill Iruka before they could drive them off"_

"What kind of guy was this Kakashi person? And what happened with this chunin exam that blanks off at the third test?"

_"Kakashi-sensi was an annoying pervert with a stolen Sharingan eye, he wasn't mch of a jounin instructor for Naruto, he didn't appear on the survivor list at the sound library so I guess he died somewhere along the way. The third test was interrupted because the sound and the sand attacked, otherwise your father would have probably get to be a chunin"_

"Why do the reports stop? Where do they continue? Why aren't there any documents about my mother?"

_"they stop cause you grandmother and friends kidnapped Naruto for some reason, if I remember correctly you can find the rest under "Akatuski" and "missing-nins". What comes after is with all of Hinata's recordings at the Hyuga compound, take everything you want from here and lets go to see where everything happened!"_

"Chill down, stupid fox rant, I think I wanna stop at my father's old apartment, just to check it out. How can I get there?"

An::\\ normal storytelling mode!

"Fighting? It already began? I was sure it'll be at least five hours before it starts.." Karen thought to herself, she rushed to the battlefield, she was amazed from the situation that her teammates were in; more than 15 demons surrounded them, only five were demonic beasts, the rest were clones created with chackra.

"Damn it! Hob, we can't hold them back, let alone get a clean hit, it's a freck'ing madness! What kind of ninjutsu is it?" Doro cursed, his special sound attacks didn't affect the enemy, sound did get to their ears but didn't have any affect.

"who the heck can have enough chackra to create this kind of army?!? Each one of them is special and attacks in a different style!" Hob replied as he blocked another fang attack made by the demonic dog. 

"Stupid idiots, they don't even realize these are demons and not ninjutsu" Karen whispered, "go help'em, the team is more important than keeping *that* jutsu a secret" the Kyubi said, her emotionless behavior amazed him, she actually thought about leaving her two friends to die!

"demonic earth strike no jutsu!" a feminine voice shouted from a distance, the ground began to shake under the two sound genins, spikes suddenly erupted from the solid ground, "what the hell!" Hob screamed, the spikes cut through the army that attacked them but he also noticed the spikes formed a circle around a large rock that also suddenly appeared from the floor. 

"Look out, Hob, it can be another team that's after our scroll", fear took over Doro with each new turn of events, he considered himself to be a strong shinobi, talented in all types of jutsus and intelligent enough to know how to utilize his skills to their top, but the chunin exam made him realize he was merely a child with an superiority complex. The large rock started to crack down, reveling a girlish figure with an evil grin, "watch how it is done, I won't always be here to save your asses!" she said.

Karen looked at her enemies, she could recognize one of them, it was a copy of a mist missing nin that her father once met, he held a large sword and he was the commander of the demon squad. She flashed out five shurikans, they were meant for the dogs, the kyubi taught her exactly how to deal with each type of demon, the dogs were the weakest type, they were considered trash by any kind of demon, they didn't even know they were alive, they were puppets. 

Her shurikans met the dogs forehead, causing blood to splash out from their bodies as they fell to the ground motionless, she looked at the other demons, searching to the next target, or better yet, victim.

Two demons decided to use the chance to attack her, "idiots" she thought to herself, they were also copies of mist shinobies, but weren't anywhere close to the leader's strength, she could almost feel sorry for them as she appeared between them and made a gentle contact with her hands on their backs, a small wave of chackra passed from her body into theirs, tearing them apart in the process.

"Karen…?" Hob was too confused to speak straight, his beautiful teammate came out of a rocky cocoon and easily defeated all of their enemies in one strike, his eyes followed the trail of blood that came from the two shinobies she somehow disposed off, he realized that even their shared chain was vanishing into vapor. 

"no way…" Doro could only shake with awe from Karen's display of power, less than fifty seconds passed since he first heard the shout and Karen was already facing only four enemies: a man with a gigantic sword, some kid who looked like Tack only with black hair, a man with a sand head protector and a 3 meter's long slug.

"crap, they are all too strong to get rid of with chackra, I might need to ask the two idiots for help" Karen complained to herself, under the nine-tails tutoring she learned that her special chackra was the perfect weapon against most demons, they would sense the power and vaporize from fear, but the four in front of her were different, they had a high amount of chackra inside them that enabled them to act as if they were alive, it was almost like they actually had a soul of their own.

 "Doro, Hob! These demons are all copies of top-shinobies, don't get hit by any of them! Keep two of them off my back until I can tell you what to do!" she shouted to them.

Hob breathed in relief, at least his sweetheart didn't lose herself in whatever state she was in, he looked to his right and chose his target, it was the sand guy, half of his face were hidden beneath a cloth from the head protector, Hob preformed the seals and shouted "swirling fang" the first tilt of chackra inside his body sent him to the air, the second tilt changed his course to his target. He was about to hit the enemy but a sharp stab on his back stopped him, he looked at his shoulder, a black mark now covered it, and his enemy was five meters behind him, holding his hand like a large katana.

"My chance!" Doro hissed when the slug tackled him, he begun to deploy the sound waves from outside his hands but then the slug separated into thousands of small slugs that crawled behind him and reappeared as a whole slug. Doro tried to turn to his enemy but then he felt a hard pulling from the front, he looked and then saw that the slug has merged itself around him, and he was a soon-to-be meal of the slug.

********chapter 7 – house of the dead – end*******

well, it's the chunin exam again! Nuff said, you already can tell this exam never goes as planned…

well, Karen's kicking asses, demons kick asses, and Temari's just being there… not much more to say, but here's a challenge for you, every demon which will appear in the story, is based on another character, some from the original manga, and some from the previous story, try fishing their real identities out!

And here are some shout outs (!):

Synaptix:

Well, I'm tried from the start to show how Karen isn't Naruto, so I have to make her a bit selfish and weird… and I think you got the answer for Karen's nin development (btw: the jutsu she used appeared before in my previous fic, go fish who was the first to use it!).

Hattuteline:

I think of it more as a "get a character out of the story" chapter than a build up chapter, Kishimonto should do it sometimes too, It's getting too hard to remember all the names, especially when there's nothing to go on with them (think about the four sound gates, they're just plain boring). And things will accelerate from now on…

Eikou:

- I think I'll give up on SK fics for now, seeing a song-fic about how fox ruined the show was bad for my health…

- YGO isn't marketed, IT IS the merchandise… the card game came before the show, nuff said. Case one: yami bakura is just a child version of Griffith, but just without the cool ambition, which leaves him GAY. Case two: Kaiba has the most potenitial to be the cool guy in the show, he's evil and has style. Too bad he's a fucking idiot ("hey! I know sold my brother to the long haired gay guy, but I'll still go into the V.R machine you already told me you've messed with! I'm just to much of an idiot!"). Case three: I have no idea who you're talking about, but whenever I think about the cards I get to the following paradox: yugi's grandfather and his friend Arthur played the card game not only before the gay long haired guy was born, but while they were uncovering the text about the cards, it's enough to keep my laughing, no matter what sort of  weird spelled card is up. To conclude, most of the YGO cast is gay, and I'm not about to watch 180 eps just to be proved right, Narutaru isn't that violent, it's just dark, it sets chills up your spin without showing a drop of blood.

- I'm pretty sure I'm going to turn into an even more depressed guy in the army, but for now, I can take comfort in the fact I wasn't drafted yet…

- Ghost can scare people on a date, god knows I get the creeps every time I see manta…

RuByMoOn17:

Yes, I got rid of shally, due to the fact I started to use her too much, at least she died nicely, with some demon history, and not like junk… did you notice that the demons were a pig (ino) and deer (shika) and a butterfly (chou), it's because the three make a combination in a Japanese card game, like a royal flash in poker, besides! It's your first review to this story, it's great to see that some new people read the story, and if you're wondering, I have two months left of ready story, which means weakly updates!

Well, cya all next week, same place, same time, same messed up author who has purpose in his life…


	8. One Family

Wow, lots of things happened since last week, some bad, some good, and some depressing…

First thing, my report card, I got four 90's (economics, psychology, normal history and advanced history), four 80's and two 70's. The only bad grade was in literature (58), and I got it cuz I was just too lazy to do anything in the last test. What I realized is that school makes us lose our self esteem, don't let it get you. Youaren't as stupid as they want you to believe you are.

Secondly: I'm out of burnable CD-ROMs, which is a devastating blow to my anime needs, for already two days I can't watch anything new, since I'm totally out of free space in my hard drive.

Third thing, I'm not only tired, but now I'm sick as well, it's really annoying, and I hate it, I feel like I can throw up any second now…

On the bright side, I got a lot of reviews for the last chapter. So there'll be a lot of shout outs (!).

Chapter 8: One Family

The bowl-headed demon launched his own attack on Karen, a series of advanced Taijutsu, "So fast, no openings!" she cursed; she could barely block his assault, and couldn't even come close to counter-attack him. The second demon didn't attack yet, but he followed the battle precisely, waiting for his chance to slip in the attack. A hard kick to the stomach sent Karen flying to the air, for her great surprise, the demon didn't continue the onslaught and just left the place. The second demon, he was modeled after a shinobi named Zabuza, started his ritual of seals, a large blast of water shaped as a dragon hit her, sending her smashing into a wall.

Hob already accepted the fact that he was a dead man when he saw the sand demon running towards him. He had no way to escape, he closed his eyes and hoped for a painless death.

***Swish!!!***

"you shouldn't give up on life, boy" he heard a female voice, Hob looked up to see a blond haired woman, she was beautiful "just like Karen.." he thought, his eyes gazed past her, he saw that her hand was covered in blood, but the hand was planted in the sand shinobi's throat, her hand was suddenly getting cleaner, just like when they fought the creature before, the blood vaporized into thin air.

"Can't… breathe…" Doro muttered, air was squeezed out of his lungs; the slug was chocking him with immense force, Doro could only pray for salivation at that point, and he didn't even matter who would be his savior, even if it was Hob and he was doing it in front of Karen and impressing her into a long-term relationship, all that Doro wanted in that point was to live on. He was losing his eyesight when he suddenly felt that his body accelerated for a small part of the second and then hit the ground, he immediately took in as much air as he could, then he heard a few more sounds, he could tell they were coming from an open handed attack meeting a soft material, such as a body of slug, he smiled to himself. 

"This one is o.k., he just needs to regain his breath" Neji shouted, "this one is a bit scared, but nothing else!" Reilla shouted back, they broke the rules of the chunin exam by interfering and saving the kids, but the exam has only begun, and if the kids didn't have what it took to be chunins, no amount of help will get them there.

"we deeply thank you for saving our lives, we in your debt forever" Hob and Doro said in union, the woman came from the cloud hidden village and the man came from an un-identified one, Hob looked at the man's face, or to be exact, the man's eye, "totally white, like Kare… Karen! What happened to her? Where is she?" he panicked, Doro joined him quickly, he hated to think that Karen was in danger and he wasn't around to help her. "I didn't see anyone else around, only you two" Reilla said, "me either… wait a second, did you say Karen? What's her last name?" Neji started to worry, not only that he'll have to meet her, she was also near one of the greatest demons nest at the village, which was the old apartment of Naruto.

"Damn, I have a terrible headache…" Karen complained to herself, she was buried under the rubble of stone, it was to dark for her eyes to see anything, "guess you'll have to crawl out of here" the kyubi said, Karen threw her hands at her side, and tried to push the stones back and revel the light, "no use, the stones are too heavy, that Zabuza guy got me hard with his water blast" she crawled with her hands searching in front of her for obstacles. 

After ten minutes of crawling she found herself in a small room, filled with demonic stench. "my, my, what a coincidence it is… looks like we're just where you wanted us to be, this used to be your father's place, and now it's a nesting den for the demons here" the Kyubi mentioned, he still remembered the day that Naruto stopped calling this apartment  home, the place didn't change much since then. 

"Damn, this place is a wreck, you know? Time really messed it up..." Karen stated, pieces of unidentified trash were scattered on the floor, and the walls that didn't fall down were filled with holes in them. 

"no, actually, it is probably the best preserved place around, this is almost the same as when your father left it, he just didn't take good care of it" the Kyubi said with a nostalgic voice, nobody touched it since, they leaf people considered it as a hunted place, the fox demon couldn't blame them, as the place was now one of the more attractive places for demons…

"So what's with these holes in the wall? They just happened to be there before?" Karen asked; the place was an un-livable dump, even compared to her apartment, which was considered un-inhabitable by everyone from the sound she ever met. 

"not really, when Naruto was about 14 he got an idea to use my power in one of his jutsus, but he forgot how hard it was for him to learn the first time and when he tried combining them the chackra got out of control and blasted the holes and almost killed your father, after two days he woke up and decided not to practice that jutsu in a small room ever again" the nine-tailed demon said, he remembered how much he laughed at Naruto after the accident. 

'hmp, so what was that jutsu anyway? You better not tell me it was something stupid that got him nowhere" Karen asked, she wasn't sure what she should think about her father at that moment, on one side, she was getting to know everything about him, but on the other side, she hated what she learned, her father was everything she didn't want to be, a loser with no logic and just a stupid passion for a title, it was just like Sasuke and Sakura treated her, always asking her what she would want to accomplish or what she would wish to be in the future.

"Her name is Karen Uzumaki… when I think of it; she kinda looks like you two…" Hob said, his mind stopped when he heard what he said, Karen didn't look 'kinda' like them, Karen had the blond hair of Reilla and the eyes of Neji, she moved in the exact same foxy way that Reilla walked, and she held her eyes straight like Neji's. 

"Can it be that you two are her… parents?" Doro asked, his mind was filled with the same thoughts as Hob's, But Karen lived alone, and she was an ex-leaf, the woman in front of them was a cloud shinobi, but Doro couldn't think of the resemblance as just a coincidence. 

Reilla looked at Neji's face, it was pale and she knew that her face were pale none-the-less, Neji told her that from all the investigators that ever came to the leaf, she attracted the highest amount of demons, Neji hypothesis was that the since the demons were drawn out of Naruto's memory, they went after people from his past, "but Karen, his daughter, how will they react to her…" she wondered, a picture came to her mind.

 she saw once how the demons were born, the chackra pool started whirling faster but grew smaller at the same time, all of the chackra liquid focused itself at one single point, after a minute it begun to rise, and seconds later it was a pillar of spinning chackra, after the vortex calmed, a demon was floating above the pool. Neji had his mind occupied on the same thing, he didn't know today's Karen, but he remembered the playful little girl that Naruto asked him to take after before going on missions, she used to call him "niijii" and tried to poke his eyes out. And now she was around the most dangerous places at the whole fire country, alone against an army of demonic shinobies.

"I will take the silence as a yes, I have a shitload of questions for you two, but you should answer them to Karen, she's the one you left behind" Doro said, misunderstanding the two. "You got it wrong, we're indeed related to her, but we are certainly not her parents, but it doesn't matter, where is she?" Neji replied immediately, he couldn't believe that the genins thought him and Reilla as Karen's parents; they weren't THAT comfortable with each other…

"dunno, she was fighting these two demons before, one with a giant sword and a boy with a freaky bowly haircut, she said she could handle them but she looked really tired after fighting the first bunch and kicking their asses" now that Hob thought on it, Karen wasn't necessary in such a bad position, other than her weird chackra control, she was a top sound ninja, both in terms of body and mind, and from the part of her fight he *did* see, she also had learned a handful of amazing jutsus.

"look under the sink, there should be a bunch of scrolls that your father kept, mainly variations that he made for his own jutsus" the demon suggested, as much as Karen tried, she couldn't find any interest in her father's apartment, and nighttime was growing closer, and she still needed to find her teammates and set up for the night. "if they are still alive" she suddenly thought to herself, for her great surprise, it actually got her worried, not just the fact that she might need to cut off sleeping this night, but the fact that Hob and Doro could have been hurt, she then realized that ever since the incident with Shally, she started to think about them more and more, she actually found herself angry at them when they sparred recklessly with each other.

 "Oh my! Its female feelings! I just have to get out of this body!" the nine tailed fox said in highly amused voice, he knew that being trapped in humans was helping him learn how mortals thought, but he never imagined that he could get an insight on female psychology, it was a chance that he never came to think about. 

Karen was about to stop the demon from pondering on his new chance when she heard a loud sound, she looked outside to see a colorful flare at the air, "the first quitter of the exam" she thought to herself.

-------=----------=-------------

"you – are – not - her" the teenaged boy said, he was so close, the girl he caught did have blond hair, but she was not the one he looked for, he laughed at her pathetic try to call for help through the flash bang, she might have thought he was one of the other ninjas, as she handed him a scroll of some sort, but he didn't mind it, he allowed his hand to manifest into a claw, a swift motion cut her left leg off, she managed to shoot up the flare before he hit her again. 

This time sending her into a large bush, he allowed the chackra to run to his mouth, his breath of flame quickly embarked the girl; he turned back, into his home for the past 8 years, which was the only place that was somewhat close to a home. He saw two of the huge demon gang that nested near his father's house, he called the two, a quick touch was all he needed, and they both vanished, leaving their so-called memories to him. 

He got on his four and continued running, he heard from behind him the older man coming, he wondered how many more mistakes he could afford to make before they all run away. He hated himself for sending just a dog out on that important survey mission, but it was the best he could provide for the meanwhile. He sniffed the air, he smelled four people, two kids older than him, a man and a woman, both the adults were around for the past few weeks, he thought many times about talking to them but always decided against it, they just didn't know, only she could possibly know. 

----Chapter 8 – one family – ended with a cliffhanger-----

Yay, a new character, who is one of my favorites, based on some berserk manga issues and Trigun thoughts, got to love' it.

Shout outs (!):

Synaptix:

Here's a small hint, the jutsu was used in a flashback, and it wasn't referred to by its name, if you look over the old story again, you'll find it. About Karen's character, she was raised in a different way from Naruto, so she deals with things differently, and besides, she angst sometimes, and how can anyone hate angsting characters? 

RuByMoOn17:

Yep, chunin exams are cool, but we all know that it won't go according to plan, never.

So you noticed the demons? That neat, I decided that every advanced blood-line should be explained through some involvement by demons, wait for the Hyuuga history!

hmr:

Karen meeting Reilla? It would have to be a happy family reunion, right? Cuz I only write fluffy happy scenes, right? By the way, what does the name 'hmr' stand for, is it 'hiten mitsuguritsi ryu' from kenshin?

X2DarkLord:

Your nick sounded familiar so I checked and you're the guy who wrote some Kyubi focused stories! Why did ya stop? I really liked reading them… anyway, you're right, the demons are the demon brothers (chain), Zabuza (big sword), Lee (bowel head), Baki (sand forehead protector) and a random summoned slug (slug…), you're prize is a virtual cookie. And when I say virtual cookie – I don't mean a real cookie, or even a virtual manifestation of a cookie, it's just a token of appreciation without any legal bindings…

Eikou: 

Actually, I wrote last week's shout outs (!) in 2 AM, so I was tired, worried about the report cards and then English project, and now I'm just tired and sick (we handed the damn project! Whoo hoo!) the report card was really nothing special, all I know is that next semester I should work hard on English (so I could do my finals and get over it this year), Math (to get good grade on the ridiculously easy final exam) and that I should remember to zerox someone's note in bible and literature, other than that, I can keep living as I've done until today, wasting my time between animes and the gym.

Oh, and I one of the 'get depressed and suicide' type of people, so I get depressed easily, I guess that's why I like angst stories, it's like sharing my pain with the world, yay.

Hattuteline:

Doing the same chunin exam again? Am I crazy or something? After it was clearly stated that they don't do the same exam year after year? Did you really believe I would bore you with ten chapters of preliminary fights between characters you just don't care about? I hope you give me more credit than that… I really liked the first exam and I think it's one of the anime's smartest things, but since I couldn't think of anything like that I just moved to the survival team exam with slight modifications.

The demons? They aren't as strong as the originals, but they act the same, they think the same (to the extent demons, made out of chackra, can think) and they attack the same, according to the restrictions on them.

Hyate? Was he a chunin? I'm pretty sure he was an ANBU (and therefore, a jounin), but I can't find his rank anywhere in the mange.

Oh yeah, I just remembered something funny we had today in history class, we're learning about WWII start, and when you ignore all the millions of people who died there, the course of war was damn funny.

Poland invasion: million Germans with tanks against a few soldiers on foot and horses running\riding respectably towards their death while the Germans take them out like ducks, besides, can any of you imagine the polish people fight? I sure can't… Norway\Denmark invasion: same thing, all the Germans had to do was to step on the island, shoot the drunk soccer fan and then declare "ve are the Nazis! Thiss land is vours!" and that's the end of the story. France: now this is the funny part,  France built this great defense line, but stopped it at Holland\Belgium, they counted on the Dutch people to stop the Germans from advancing… and after the Germans got to France borderline, they thought the Germans won't go through the mountains, so they took all of their army to the horizontal land, but surprise, the Germans went through the mountains (which were at the end of the French defense line, so they basically walked to the end of the wall) and defeated the French army like the sissies they are. Now all they had left was the British help army on France territory, it appears that the German commanders argued for two days on who will get to kill the brits while Britain sent all of there ships to bring the soldiers back, so after the Germans finally decided who will attack the Englishmen, they found out that they lost their chance. 

Anyway, I know war is awful and WWII in particular, but there are some things you just can't ignore and be serious about, like counting on Dutch people to protect you from Germany.

Oh, and it might sound like I hate the Europeans, but it's not true, I only hate French people.

Keep it real, till next week.


	9. Naraku

Another week, another chapter, another overused opening sentence.

I guess you don't care about my rantings, and I don't have much to talk about this week, so lets move on to the story.

Disclaimer: in case you forgot, I'm not Kishimonto, and I'll never be, so there's no apparent chance I'll own the Naruto manga. But if something changes and I suddenly do, I'll be sure to tell you about it.

Chapter 9: Naraku

{

Rasengan number 6 variation: multiply chackra focus points.

Desired affect: multiply blasts one after another for large amounts of enemies or to wreck places up.

Training notes:  
Day 1: "this shit doesn't work"

Day 2: "the chackra spins are getting in each others way, not stable enough"

Day 3: "can't multiply the inner walls, can't separate the spins"

Day 4: "using two hands doesn't work and so does cloning, the spinning motion is too uncontrollable"

Day 5: "almost killed Lee, need to find a better place to practice"

Day 6: "talked to pervey, doesn't agree to show me the 4th's notes, moving on to plan B"

Day 15: "Plan B failed, got new mission: to clean the offices all day for the next month. Temporarily stopping the research"

}

"What's this scroll all about anyway?" Karen asked in her mind.

"well, that's one of your father's failed tries to further develop the Rasengan, he wanted to be able to blast through entire building in order to catch his enemies off guard, it didn't work out much, he tried to steal the original scrolls of this jutsu and got severely punished, then he got so depressed that he failed even after planning everything through that he didn't feel like working more on it" the Kyubi explained.

 He remembered how much pride Naruto had in his plan, it was one of his first ninja-like pranks, he learned the configuration of the lock and memorized the changing times of the guarding shifts, he even had an alibi with a ramen eating shadow clone that he replaced every twenty minutes.

Everything should have worked great if Kiba wasn't there to challenge his clone to a fight, and Ino was there as well to watch, his clone could avoid all the blows for only ten minutes, and then the uproar started when Kiba realized that the real Naruto never was there to fight him, in less than a moment, an overly angered mob of Kiba's friends were looking for him, they didn't find him, but all the mayhem woken up the 5th and she found him going through a highly confidential pack of scrolls.

"so it goes like this, right? Focus the chackra on one point in my palm and have it spin around without escaping my grasp?" Karen asked, she didn't wait for an answer, she marked an invisible point on her hand, then she began imagining water in her hands, she slowed her breath, with each inhale she would move the imaginary water, it was fairly easy, she quickly switched the calm motion into a stormy one, "storm, clouds, lightning, thunder…" her hand began shaking.

*Boom!*

Karen was thrown 5 meters back, she opened her eyes to find that over half of her body was buried in the sand she could see that in the place she stood before was now a black pitch hole, she couldn't even see it's ending. 

"What the hell are you trying to do?" the demon shouted at her, "I was trying to do this Rasengan thing you talked about.. I'll just try it again!" she said, the damage that a failed attempt could bring was immense, even more than the demonic jutsu the kyubi taught her. 

"Like hell you aren't! The Rasengan is deadly when used correctly, it's dangerous when practiced in the normal way, it's suicidal when you try to do the final stage without the first two, and it's stupid beyond words when you try it when you have our kind of chackra! You're lucky the kickback pushed you away from the area of the blast, even from this distance you're bleeding like hell itself, you know?" the Kyubi screamed at her.

 Karen's arms and legs were full with open wounds and she didn't even notice it, it did make him grin, though, Naruto was also like that, always back on his feet even after getting beat to dirt.

"Damn it! He must have been a real blood lusted freak…" Neji said, the scroll was left untouched, so it was either that the attacker had the same scroll already or that he didn't mind the scrolls all together, the stone jounin was still mourning over his student, she lost her leg first and then was burned to death. 

"There's at least one of those guys at each exam, the sad part is that they grow to be the best shinobies around if you don't stop them when they're young…" Reilla said, she remembered her exam, a grass genin planned on killing everyone at the first exam and to get the title by being the only contestant, luckily for everyone, he wanted her as his first victim. 

Needless to say, he met a very unpleasant surprise when her silent lightning jutsu trap got him and fried his nervous system, from that point on, he experienced everything tenfold their original "power", from what she learned, that genin quit the life of ninjas and become a gourmet chef. 

"Look at this, Hob, what kind of demon left these footprints?" Doro asked, Neji immediately turned to them, he lived at the leaf ever since it was destroyed, and he knew at the absolute point of knowing that demons did *not* leave tracks behind.

"You should come and see it, it's bad news" Reilla said – those were the footprints of a beast, and a rather large one, she highly doubted that a genin could summon a creature of that caliber. 

"Well, they look like those of Shu-al's, so I guess it's another fox" Hob said, he knew that Karen left Shu-al at the sound village, and the footprints were a bit smaller than the ones Shu-al had. Neji quickly performed a series of seals, he didn't like to use the Byakougan eyes these days, demons gave him a headache.

 "Oh, shit… kids, you should really get moving with your exam. Reilla, I need to have a word with you" he quietly said with a shacking voice, he closed his eyes and tried to drive the feeling he had away, it didn't work. 

"This thing that was here… it's a fox alright, and a demon that belongs to this plain, even his footprints have traces of chackra on them, there are two possible options, none of them are positive" Neji whispered.

 "One: there is another colony of demons, and they were born at this plain, and they came here for the chunin exam" Reilla said.

 "And two: this demon was here all along, and now he decided to show himself and happened to go after a blond female ninja that's 12 years old" Neji completed her thought, both of the options were disastrous, and he wasn't sure which one was the lesser evil.

"Or perhaps both are true… a pup of the nine-tailed demon that was here and hid from you" the blonde child said to himself, he had to fight the urge to say it loud and expose himself to them.

 "I have lived alone for 8 years, I can do it for a few more days, I can't waste my only chance" he recited to himself, he knew both of them perfectly. Uzumaki Reilla: a cloud ninja, her father left her at the village, she was raised by the Reikage and was honored as a top shinobi since day one, has mastered over 1000 jutsu and developed them to the maximum, was defeated only once. 

The male was Hyuga Neji: came from the leaf village, the branch house of the Hyuga clan, his father was sacrificed in order to protect the secrets of the bloodline, he was considered a genius, top student of his class, Chunin at 14, Jounin at 18, The boy spitted the names as fast as he could, even in his thought,

"Names are for those who other know about"

 He reminded himself, and he just wasn't one of those people. When he was younger he toyed with the idea of having a name, but he decided against it, only parents had the right to name their sons, and if they weren't around, then the closet kin or the village committee. But he didn't even have a village to be an outcast of, nobody even knew that he existed and nobody could act as if he wanted him to disappear, he laid a finger on his neck.

Nothing

He laughed at his pathetic hope, his skin was cold as ever, even the flames he spitted before couldn't warm his body up. Even the demons he commanded were warmer than him, they knew where they came from and had others of their kind, he knew as well where he came from, knew too well. 

8 years ago, the same spot where the nine-tails demon forged himself again out of his vessel, after the demon spirit escaped and created the vortex, the spirit inside of him sensed the danger around and gathered the two dead bodies, his soul took over them and combined with the bodies, if he wouldn't have done so then he would have died with his mother. 

"No, dead is for the living, I just wouldn't have been born" he corrected himself, but he still wasn't born or alive, his cold skin was the proof, he was just the by-product of that couple, if she wouldn't have woken up in the middle of the night from her pregnancy sickness, then he would have people to call a family – a father, a mother, a sister, even a pet to play with. 

Instead, he was stuck there, unable to even talk properly because he hardly had the chance, he couldn't have reveled himself to Neji, he knew that Neji could and would kill him on sight, he could count the number of times he talked on one hand, the girl that wasn't the one he looked after and three foolish ninjas that came to inspect what happened at the leaf and ignored Neji's warning not to wander alone.

"But this is going to change" he thought happily, it did pose a problem to him, how would he call himself? She needed a way to speck to him and think of him, the boy from hell needed a name for his reunion with her.

"Hell"

"Call me Naraku…" he whispered softly, tasting his new name, it rolled perfectly on his tongue, "I'm so-rry, mother, father, for not being a-ble to live with the name you would- have gi-ven me" he said to the ground, it was the sixth time he talked, he guessed that he would have to get used to it sooner or later, he doubted that she could understand him without help, after all, she didn't have the memories he had.

"It'll pass by the end of the week" Karen said, she covered her wounds with bandages, her arms were a mummified with paper just like Doro's arms.

"That's not the point; you are a ninja, in a middle of dangerous mission, totally on your own. You can't hurt and risk yourself like this, for your own sake, trust me when it comes to your father's past, and when I tell you not to try a jutsu that is completely wrong for you, listen to me!" the kyubi shouted in her mind.

Over the past months he grew to like her in someway, it was like a father instinct that passed from Naruto to him, it could also be the simple fact that both of them were abandoned, he drove that thought away, reminding himself that he is one of most powerful demons ever to walk the realm of the mortals, not a lost pup that was just born.

 "Was, now I'm merely a voice in one girl's mind, can't get much lower than this" he corrected himself.

"Cut the self pity, you sound pathetic; now tell me, what jutsu do you suggest to learn?" Karen voice stopped his line of thought; she was holding a large pack of scrolls that Naruto wrote before the kidnapping, "well, why not start with a bang? He rewrote the scroll of Kage Bunshin somewhere when he tried to figure out how to divide chackra between the clones in a chaotic way in order to avoid detection, it's a great jutsu for anyone to have" he said, he wondered how many hours would take her to learn it, it took her father almost a full day. 

"Kage Bunshin? Found it! now, I'm going to show you that I can master anything that my father could, and you'll have to teach me that Rasengan thing!" Karen yelled to him.

------Chapter 9 – Naraku – End----

Yes, another chapter is out, and now our mystery man has a name, Naraku (which means hell), and by the time you'll get to know his full name, you'll all be able to guess it already, cuz I've made it so fucking clear, even from this single chapter.

Anyway, some shout outs (!)

HMR: Kenshin rulz, its one great anime. I should be getting the manga soon, so it'll rule even more. "War of the last Wolves" was one great song, so was "Warriors suite".

Synaptix: I think this chapter answered the Rasengan question, didn't it? and Naraku will prove to be one angsting character, cuz we all like to angst over our lives.  About jutsus? I've started writing a few battle based chapters over the past three weeks, so you can expect seeing a lot of new cool moves, but it'll take a while.

X2DarkLord: no more Kyubi fics? Too bad, there aren't enough original stories around, I swear, there's just a 'baby boom' of stories from the "naruto is coming back" genre, it's not that I hate them, but it's just wearing out the effect.

Eikou: Bad days, they just suck, I was out of anime today, IRC is such a bothering program, I've got no idea how many years it'll take me to get one damn file… how the hell did I get there? Anyway, I had a better week than last one, so don't worry, there's always an uphill after a downhill, or something like that…

Hattuteline: Hey, I don't write much cliffhangers! But I do leave a lot of things to guess, it's to keep the readers interested. The next chapters will go to a climax, then a small break time, and another climax, which I suppose will be the end, I'm not too sure about it, I'm having problems with how to end the story…

Oh, and everybody, I need your help, I need a name for an elite task force, you know, like the S.W.A.T or something like that, but I need a cool name, I've got one name, but I want to use it on another story, and I don't to use it twice. So if you got any suggestions, feel free to write them.

Hope you liked It, see ya next week.


	10. To Fight a Losing Battle

Another week passed since the last update, and we're already at chapter 10… I got so many reviews so I won't waste time about ranting, I'll just say that I'm finally finishing the Ranma 1\2 anime, almost a year after I started watching it.

Special note: I was in a really weird mood when I wrote this chapter, it was after my English teacher's son died in the Lebanon border, so I had some issuses to think about, and it reflects in the story.

Chapter 10: To fight a losing battle

"Ealla, there's a woman here to talk to you" Konhamaru called his wife, he knew the woman that wanted to talk with her, Reilla, a cloud shinobi "it's about Karen, isn't it?" he asked her, he hoped she remembered him, he was a chunin when they met, "in some ways it is, you're that chunin kid that was around last time I came here, right?" Reilla asked, she noticed how he changed. After what happened to the leaf he changed his approach and become a Jounin and a scientist, all the flash bangs were created by him. 

"You're Ealla, right? My name is Uzumaki Reilla, and I'm here to discuss one of the genins in your team, her name is Uzumaki Karen" she said, Ealla looked at her and signaled her to come inside a large tent. Reilla looked around, she recognized all of the tent's habitants, "Uchiha Sasuke, Sakura, and the guy from the Ramen stand where we met Sasuke" she said coldly.

 "Close enough, he's the sound Kage, and I partly remember you, so why are you here?" Sasuke asked, Ealla still reminded him of Naruto in many ways, she was also the one who carried him to the leaf by force. 

"Officially, I'm part of the hidden cloud freelancing jounins and my mission is to be here in case anything goes wrong" she said, "and un-officially?" Sakura asked, although she already knew the answer, "Karen" Reilla replied, "I'm here to recommend that she'll be removed from this exam as soon as possible".

"that way, it's her smell for sure" Hob said, he and Doro were looking after their third teammate and crush target, they had to tell her the news about Neji and Reilla, even if she never complained about her lack of family, they both knew how much it hurt her, she wandered around the sound village just because she didn't want to go back to her empty home most of the day, "she has the right to know them" they decided immediately.

 "Her scent ends here, so she should be close" they looked around, the night has already fallen but they could still see a blue light from below the cliff on their right, they ran towards it.

"you - two, she – pro-tected - you" Naraku said, his words were cut since he never tried saying something like that before, he looked like a 16 years old, twice than his true age, he cursed himself for not noticing their approach before. "Who are you talking about? Where is your team?" Doro asked, in his opinion, the teenager was talking strangely, and suffered from a serious lack of fashion sense.

 "more importantly, where is your forehead protector? We have to keep them visible at all times" Hob continued, his nose itched, the boy reeked a strong scent of death and smelled awfully like the demons they met before. "I – do –not –have a fore-head pro-tector, I am – not a ninja".

Doro suddenly snapped, "this guy, he has no pulse… he is dead" his voice shook the words out, "that is right, now – where is Karen?" Naraku continued, he laughed inside about the two, he knew from the memories he collected before that they were friends of her, he just hoped they'll tell him fast and leave. 

"what are you planning to do to her?" Doro asked loudly, Hob was already charging towards Naraku from behind. "whatever it is, we won't let you harm her!" he shouted, his hands hit the ground, blasting sand in his enemy's eyes, his fist stretched out to deliver the blow.

Nothing

"Do- not force me – to kill you" Naraku said, he wondered how could it be possible to be as weak as them, the memory from his parents appeared, both of them, she was considered inferior even to her small sister, and he was the last one at everything. Even with the memories, weakness was something that he couldn't understand; after all, he never met someone that he couldn't destroy with a wave of his hand.

Slam

Hob's body was thrown back, a slight touch was all that Naraku needed.

Blink

Now he was next to Doro, he decided that he should scare them enough so that they'll call her for him. He raised his left hand and begun spinning the chackra in it, a ball was formed, he raised his right hand and touched the ball, the ball started to shake when the chackra from the right hand entered it, the ball changed it's color from transparent yellow to a black red one, just like Naraku's eyes. 

He held up the ball of chackra, Doro tried to land a punch on him but his efforts were in vein, his speed wasn't a match to his enemy, and his sound waves couldn't harm those who didn't live and didn't have normal ear drums. A shockwave went through the ground when the ball of chackra fell down, it was felt by everyone at the exam, but only Hob and Doro saw its effect. The rocks started to shake, one after another, they exploded into dust.

"Doro, we probably don't stand a chance, but we have to do it"

"Exactly, we can't let him touch Karen, no matter what"

"Leadership" Neji entered the conversation "I asked Shikamaru once something" all the eyes turned to him, Sasuke and Sakura haven't seen him since he asked them to watch over Karen, "It was after he was promoted to a chunin, I asked him why he allowed Ino to lead their team instead of him. He answered to me that leadership isn't telling people what to do, he said that even kids can command others, he also said that knowing to think ahead and to plan a successful mission was just strategizing, leadership, he said, was to be able to choose what to do in a desperate situation that can't work out well no matter what, and to stand behind that choice with no regrets", he sat down.

 "what we have here is the same, the daughter of the nine tails fox demon at the place most crowded with demons on the face of the earth. We can decide to bring her to the vortex and to run the risk she'll awake the demon, we can also send her away and let desperation take over her and wait until she becomes a missing nin with the power of the Kyubi and watch hopelessly while she releases her anger on everyone she meets, the last option is to kill her and go on the risk she'll survive and go take revenge on all of us, which of the three do we take?" he explained, they all silenced.

"I suggest that we'll leave things as they are, postpone the decision until we have more information" Ealla said, she felt the ground shaking as well, that was what led to this meeting. 

"won't do us any good, no matter how much time passes, non of the options will be discarded, Naruto was missing nin, a respectable member of the leaf and it's destroyer in his life, non of those were predictable, it just happened overnight, one day he was a smiling kid…" Sakura added "the next time we saw him he was a depressed man that couldn't smile, next time he was a cynical missing nin that chased after Hinata, after that he was living with us as a black haired Hyuuga, and then he blew off some steam and turned the leaf to nothing" she concluded.

"So what do we do? Risk it on a dice?" Sasuke presented the question again, if it was up to him, he would let Karen do whatever she wanted, he owed at least that much to her father. "No, the two of you are going to keep her as much as in good state until the exam is over, and after that, the four of you are going to have a long honest talk to her about everything she asks, got it?" Tsubakerou finished the conversation with the power of authority.

Karen woke up with a strange feeling, her right arm was touching something rather hairy and her legs were in the same condition, at any other day she wouldn't have paid any attention to it, since it was Shu-al's sleeping position "but… Shu-al can't be sleeping near every part of my body" was her first clue that something was wrong, the second and more important clue was the fact she was in the middle of the chunin exam in the leaf village and Shu-al was back at the sound.

Karen slowly opened her eyes and remembered how she got to that position; "I came back and a tried that Kage Bunshin jutsu…" "and then you collapsed from tiredness in the middle" The fox demon finished the sentence in her mind. She felt one of the furred creatures moving a bit, the dog then looked at her with red eyes and stood up on his four without further reference to her. 

"He didn't attack" she said, "well of course he didn't, you are his alpha male.. female, you can probably even order him to jump from the roof and he'll do it" the Kyubi said, Inu-injiyuu were just beasts, even when he was in his demon form he couldn't get them to do anything better than the things dogs did on their own. "I should really head back and find Hob and Doro, they must be worried as hell about me, those two are so useless without me around" she said to herself.

"You o.k.?" Hob asked, he was surprised to see that he was in a fairly good shape, "I'm great, considering what that guy could do to us" Doro said, his ears ringed in a strange way, it was like when his father trained him with the sound moving taijutsu, it was like being hit by a constant wave of chackra to his ear drums. Hob looked around, it was foggy, which was out of the ordinary, because Hob knew the smell of fog well and he didn't smell any thing close to it in that moment. 

"Good, you-'re awake, where is Karen?" a hole was ripped in the fog, a small boy walked through it, he had blonde hair and a red eyes, he was much shorter than the boy they met before, but his smell was identical – no body smells, just a strong smell of blood and fox hairs, that was what led them to him. His voice was hollow and empty, but the most distinguishing part was that he spoke in an odd matter. "Come on, Hob, this is out chance!" Doro begun to run, they didn't think a kid nearly half their age could be any problem.

Mistake

Once again, Doro and were fighting a lost battle, they didn't understand what was happening, they were both fighting at their full strength but for them it seemed like the fists were performed in slow motion while Naraku simply danced between them, he didn't even try to land an attack of his own on that point, he had a similar memory from his parents; "The best way to get people to listen to you is to show them they can't effect you at any way" was what he learned from it, he wanted them both to see how useless their efforts were so that they will cooperate with him.

Naraku sighed, he didn't expect his enemies to still have stamina or motivation to fight after the first ten minutes, it wasn't hard for him but it was getting annoying, after eight years on his own he lost all of his patience, he had to stop himself from just finishing the two sound nins in one hit. "tell me when you get serious" he teased them in hopes they'll burn off the energy faster.

"So now what? Are you going to practice the Kage Bunshin all day?" the kyubi asked, "no, the boys are probably worried to death, so I'll go see them, maybe we'll try to get one of the scrolls that we need" Karen said, she figured that if her father wanted to be the Hokage that much, the least she could do was to pass the chunin exam. She walked out and saw a large amount of smoke near the cliff.

 "Wow!" the Kyubi yelled, "there's some intense fighting over there, at least a jounin level moves, someone burning up that much Chackra has to be quite a thing to see".

"so there's someone out there that can stand his ground against me? Then this is a great chance to test all this shit you've teaching me on a real enemy" Karen was exited, she knew that ever since she discovered the demon inside of her, she was getting stronger in an amazing speed. She started jumping over the roofs, avoiding the demons who roamed the village.

-----Chapter 10 – To fight a losing battle – End-----

as I said, a messed up chapter, so here's some things I want to clear out

Naraku's age: 8, the teenager appearance is just another form of him, I kinda forgot why I wrote that part, and I wasn't sure whether to edit it out or not, I decided to take the lazy road and keep it as it is.

Naraku (general): Naraku is supposed to be a mystery guy, he's revealing himself chapter after chapter, the best way to find his 'real' identity would be to go by Sherlock Holmes rule "when you dismiss everything that isn't right, what you have left, impossible as it may seem, is probably the truth".

And now to my favorite part..

Shout outs (!): 

HMR: I updated a new chapter each week for about 5 months now, I'm not gonna stop now, and though I haven't worked on the story this week, I still have a few chapters in reserve. And Naraku? A secret!

Babowonsuni: I'm glad you liked the story, but there's still more to come… And Naraku? A secret!

Orlha: don't worry, no offence taken, it's true that the name Karen isn't really Japanese, but I noticed that when I'm reading fan fiction stories I usually can't remember names such as "waturasamaru" or other Japanese names, so I decided to use an 'English' name instead. You probably noticed, but I also don't use 'chan' 'kun' and other suffixes, those things are good for anime, but when writing stories, they usually are interrupting.

X2DarkLord: it's not only that they are coming out in masses, it's also that most of them jump right into the chunin exam and leave us waiting for 13 chapters before revealing anything (I'm not referring to any particular story, of course… even though there is only one story that match that standard). Dragon is nice, but splitting it into six words will be too troublesome, I'll just use 'star force' or something.

Synaptix: the Rasengan looked cool in the manga when Naruto was learning it, but it isn't as impressive as the chidori, I hope that a few other forms of it will be raveled in time… Karen doesn't have enough time to learn Kage-Bunshin and stuff, but she had a few months of learning from the Kyubi before, it's because he was never interested in 'normal' jutsu and sticked with demonic ones, you'll see a few cool ones in later chapters. And Naraku? A secret!

Eikou: yep, Naruto should be a criminal, he just needs to lose his morals and then join Akatsuki and lead a massacre against everybody who angst's out too loud, especially Sasuke. Mirc fserves are really slow, but I like bots, I get 30-90 k from them, which is very high. I haven't seen Fushigi Yugi yet, so I don't read fanfiction of that section, but I can give examples from the inuyasha section: 1)all the kag\sess romance stories, they all start with Kagome seeing Inu and Kikyo together and then she runs off to Sess, and meanwhile she discovers her demon blood. 2) high school fics, not much to say, there all the same, just that some are good, and some aren't. Valantines day? I refuse to believe that holiday exist until I find someone to be with on that day…

Shadowcriminal: thanks, I'm happy you think so highly of this story, it's really a good ego stroke! I had to kill Naruto cuz 2nd generation fics that involve battle are usually stupid if there's some super invincible parent around that can kill everyone without problems (basically, I made Naruto to be superman in "Shadow of life"), as much as I'd like to have this story end with a happy family reunion, I can't see myself writing something as "great dragon, I want to wish everybody back from the dead", it'd be too anticlimactic for me… Britain and USA took out Italy (though it's not really hard, the Italians always give up in the middle) and landed on Normandy, it's true that they didn't break German's defense like the soviets did, but they helped around, and they sent money and military equipment to Russia.

Hattuteline: that's one serious explanation to Karen\Kyubi relationship, but I'm afraid I wasn't thinking about that, I just thought that the Kyubi wouldn't want to waste his time on being a sensei and would rather make sarcastic remarks and sleep (Note: somehow, when I write demons, I always write them like cats, they always sleep and are always lazy… it's probably cuz I'm always tired). Haku's sage was more to get the audience hooked up to the story, kishimoto didn't want to start the chunin exam right away and decided to have an introducing sage before. About the other countries, in the original manga, they don't have any reasons to turn to the leaf, the all have ninja's in their country, the only chance for the leaf to get involved will be through some A rank mission, which isn't something that naruto does yet.

Basically, you won't see much demons sprouting out now, their part was to introduce Naraku (who is to Karen what Gaara was to Naruto… sorta) and to build up the tension, there will be another mentioning of a grand demon in the next chapter (you should be able to figure out who Naraku is after that part) but that's it. Berserk is one of the best mangas I've read so far, I'm waiting for the 27th volume to be released, it should be so great!

Next chapter; a grand flashback, and a few other stuff, look forward to it.


	11. The Painter of Death

Hello people! Long time no see!

Oh wait, it's not true, it's just that I was away in a family trip for the last few days, so I feel like I was gone… 

About the trip: there's a lot to rant about, but I'll just tell you about what happened yesterday (Wednesday), we all went to the Harmon mountain, which is the tallest mountain in Israel and the only place with snow-related activities. Sounds great, right? Too bad that about 3000 more people thought about the same thing, it was so damn crowded that I couldn't even try peeing my name on the snow (which is the ULTIMATE snow activity) without the fear of law suit. At the end, I used my coat as a blanked and found myself a nice couzy uphill ramp of snow, and I sat there for about 3 hours without doing shit. Needless to say, I didn't ski (over one hour of waiting in line), I didn't go to the to (another hour of waiting in line) and I didn't build a snow man (one hour of freezing my hands to death), however, the moment I decided to do nothing but look at the snow, it started being fun.

Now ain't I a Shikamaru-wannabe?

On to the story, to a chapter filled with a flashback, half sane demons, and many meat to speculate on.

Chapter 11: The Painter of Death

Naraku was getting even more annoyed, he allowed himself to think about her again; "blonde silky hair, playful eyes, white empty playful eyes…" then he decided, he wanted the same eyes, "can you do it?" he asked inside his head, "I can try, but not here, this body can't stand much more now, you've got to get to somewhere safe before you really die" the voice answered him.

"Success!" Hob cried, it seemed like their enemy has given up, it was a surprise, the small boy has suddenly lost all of his strength and was hit badly, a punch threw him to a bush, when he got up he started limping away. "Let's get this idiot!" Doro shouted, "no, we got what we wanted, it's more important to rendezvous with Karen now" Hob stopped his friend

"can… *hhea* you… *ghh* do it?" Naraku struggled to keep his body intact, "I will try, lay down on the floor, the adjustments to your body will be easier that way, it'll take some time" the same voice replied. Naraku laid back and thought about the eyes, he still remembered Hinata, Karen had the same eyes as her, it was no surprise, Karen was her daughter after all.

--------------------Flashback-----------

"are you sure you want to do this, Hinata?' Neji looked at his cousin, it was one of the rare times that she held her eyes up, he knew that she won't give up on her decision, but it was a surprise nevertheless. "Yes, neither you nor my father can drive me from this. I have made up my mind, I will go and take that test" she answered. "I don't; understand why, your father won't choose Hanabi over you, and the test stopped being a requirement for the position after the Uchiha incident, the last clan master who took the test was 4 generations ago, it makes no sense for you to go through this" he tried to insist, he was already banned from attending to that position as he was a member of the branch house of Hyuga.

 "I know that, it's just that I have to go through that test, it's not about me being or not being the head of the Hyuga clan, I want to do it for myself…" Hinata diverted her stare now, Neji recognized it as 'remembering past experiences', "o.k, I'll send the papers, the whole thing will be ready in two weeks, do you want to keep this a secret from your' father until after you leave?" he asked. "Do it, I hate to do this to you, but I'm leaving today so you'll have to handle all the paperwork on your own, and you can tell my father of that right now, I don't care" she answered.

 "Today? Why all this sudden? You've been sitting by Naruto's bed for the past few months, and when he finally wakes up you're leaving? Shouldn't you at least wait and have a talk with him?"

"That's exactly why I'm leaving, when he got up and tried to escape, I was there, I hit him with everything I have, but I couldn't stop him. Can you understand this? The last time Naruto stood up was three years ago, before the kidnapping, when I was still a chunin, but even with all that, I couldn't stop him from continuing, I'm still too weak…" she looked at her hand, she mastered enough of her family Taijutsu to render a shinobi motionless with one hit, but she wasn't able to stop a half-dead Naruto, "when you'll see me again, I'll look right into his eyes and know that I'm in pair with him, I won't look down anymore!" she announced to herself.

"There is no changing your opinion?" Neji asked, It was a few years since he last fought Naruto, he hated to admit it, but if Hinata couldn't beat Naruto, then his own chances were slim as well. "You know the answer already, don't tell anyone outside the Hyuga about this, after this, one Hinata will die and another will grow out of her" she said fiercely.

---------*******----------

"So this is where the Hyuga base of power lies?" The sand nin asked, "yes, this is the place where I'll be tested to say weather I'm worthy of my eyes or not…", the leaf shinobi looked at her, "tested? What will happen to you?" she asked.

"If I fail to prove that I'm worthy of my eyes, I'll die, if I pass the test, I'll come back unharmed, the third chance is that he'll think I'm not suited to be an Hyuga and will give me new eyes, but that happened only once" Hinata answered, that was all she was allowed to tell her companions, and that was as far as they could escort  her, the rest of the journey was only possible for those with the eyes of the Hyuga, she looked into the water, took of her clothing, and jumped in.

The sea water covered Hinata's body, she tried desperately to swim with the currents of chackra that swirled inside, she felt how the air she stored in her lungs was escaping, she was about to go up for air when she saw a point shining with chackra in the water, "I can get there! I have to!" she thought to herself and begun swimming, she was only a few feet away from it when a large underwater wave hit her and threw her into a whirlwind, she struggled to set herself free from it's grasp but it was useless for her, the water kept on sweeping her in circles, "I can't die here" she tried to scream, but no one was there to hear her, she suddenly thought about everyone she knew, what would they think about her?

 Then it struck her, if she died now, nobody would have been surprised, they would say it was her own foolishness, to take the test of the whale demon, and that the worthless heir of the main Hyuga house has paid the rightful price for her own arrogance.

"I'll show them…' it passed through her mind, "I'll show them that I'm not the same as before, I'm here and they better realize it!" she screamed, the chackra flew out of her body onto the water, there was a moment that the water tried to keep their direction, but the momentum of the chackra was too strong and the water splashed back, leaving a clean 4 feet radius for Hinata to move in, she stepped forward to the point she saw earlier, it was a stone pillar, she sent her hand and touched the rock, she hoped that the chackra in her hands was enough to keep the pillar within her grasp, but as son as she connected her hand to the rock, a giant wave purged her body, searching for some invisible parameter which was required for those things, she felt the chackra focusing in her eyes, and then it all blacked.

Hinata woke up and tried to look at her surroundings, but she quickly realized her eyes were covered with something, she touched her face and tried to remove whatever it was, she felt it perfectly but couldn't pull it down, it was a regular piece of cloth, other then the fact it was bursting out with chackra. 

Only then she remembered what she was supposed to be doing, "I know I hadn't succeed yet, since I didn't meet him… but if I've failed I should have died…" she tried to sort he thoughts, only to realize that wherever she was, it was the place where she had to be. 

"So what now?" she wondered to herself, walking around naked and blindfolded made her feel pretty uncomfortable, but then again, the only one who would have the chance to see her in this state wasn't a creature that took any particular note in humans, other then when they came to receive it's blessing, like she was doing now. She sent her hands around, she couldn't touch any walls or the sealing, she placed her foot a feet beside her, checking for ground, she took another step forward, but then it suddenly struck her that walking around won't do her any good, "is anyone here?" she whispered.

Nothing in her whole life ever prepared her for that voice, not her father's shouts of her being too weak, not her cousin's hateful words, and not even Orochimaru's mad shouts of joy when he fought Kakashi and Gai,, it was terror that came only when one has lived and killed through centuries, lived and killed until it met the point when killing stopped being the center of it's life and become the whole skeleton of it.

"So, a daughter of the painter who draw death has come to me, are you still spilling the blood on the paper and creating the masterpiece of human art?"

"Yes, the family of Hyuga still watches as the red juice of humans covers the soil" Hinata answered, the painter of death was the first Hyuga, a simple painter that came to draw a battle between shinobies when he met the demon. The whale just looked at his paper and said he didn't like the picture, Hyuga answered him that he draws all that he can, the demon asked him what he would do if he got the chance to see the real fight between the ninjas, the artist replied that he would finish the painting and devote his rest of life to further the creation of the art, so the demon gave him the eyes that can see the chackra, that was the day when the Byakougen was created.

 A year after that the Hyuga clan was established, and a generation after it's establishment came the second head of the clan, Karen, and made it prosper into the greatest clan in the fire country.

"Why are you here?"

"I have come to ask for the eyes you  have given once to my ancestors, I stand before thee with the pledge for them" Hinata answered, she tried her best to stay calm and not to show her nervousness, but every thing she planned crashed when the demon talked to her, it was a complete loss of self esteem.

Which was exactly why she came there.

"I won't back down, if I can't face him eye to eye, how can I think about facing Naruto? Real demon, ha? nothing against my own personal demons" she thought to herself, she may not be able to see him, but she could make sure that if she was able, then she would stare right into his face, without hesitation of any sort.

"So, that is what brought you here? What a fitting twist for the painters blood, now the future generations will hold nine brushes to deal death with…"

"what? Can you read my mind? What did you mean by that?" she asked in fury, she couldn't figure out any of the things he said, but it still angered her, not only that she was blind and naked in front of him, but even her own thoughts were a open book in the demon's eyes. 

"No, it's this place, the blood of the painter which flaws in your veins is drawing what's in your heart, can you see it?"

see? See what? Hinata tried focus her eyes, but the cloth of chackra was in her way, she sent her hands to pull it off, this time she tried forcing chackra out of her hand, when she grabbed the cloth she felt something on her hand, like a small itch poking her palm, she suddenly realized that the poking created some sort of pattern, she focused more chackra out, and the feeling grew stronger, she could feel their was a large block of chackra on the cloth, and the chackra had some inscribing marks on it, she could feel that her body was at his limit, she sent a final wave of chackra, the itch reflected back to her hand, she could identify the cloth now, it was a forehead protector, with the symbol of a whale on it, as she fell to the ground she heard the voice talking.

"congratulations, daughter of the painter, you've mastered the ultimate eyes of Hyuga, the sixth sense of chackra"

a second before she fell unconscious, Hinata realized that she could even 'see' the shape of the ground by the reflected chackra, "you'll be the first person to see my new eyes, you'll finally see that I can change myself and be the greatest, just like you, Naruto" she made a silent promise to herself.

---------------------------------------------------------------

"I can't, I'm sorry, the eyes of hyuga are the work of another demon, not mine" the voice said, "but… but.. I waannnnt them!" Naruku replied, he tried to adjust his fall in a way he won't be too hurt, he managed to avoid having his head priced, but a pillar still hit his arm, leaving an ugly looking entry whole, but his arm didn't bleed, he never had any blood of his own to spill.

"stop being such a baby! I'm sure that the whale demon will gladly give you a pair of eyes if you go to him…" the voice hissed, he would have much rather to awaken at an older age, somewhere like twelve or so, Naraku was completely different from all other humans, but he still had one normal thing; he was an annoying eight year's old child.

*****Chapter 11 – The painter of Death – END*****

well, that leaves a bit more space to speculate on Naraku, right?

Oh, and before I forget, shout outs(!):

Babowonsumi:

You think the plot is confusing now, ha? then prepare to have your mind ripped apart into oblivion with the plot twists coming  around, I've got so many surprised lying ahead that you can't even see where it ends (neither can I, actually, I'm still not sure about how I'm gonna end the story, I planned on going Trigun but it doesn't fit me anymore..). 

What lack in detail do you mean? I'm kinda positive that I explain (or at least out hints) most of what's going on, but if there's something you didn't get then tell me about it, so I can explain it more clearly.

Eikou:

Well, Naraku does seem like a main character, and it does look like I'm teasing you to expose him, but don't worry, I think that everyone will guess right until he 'comes clean' with his name.

I'm pretty sure that I wrote about my teacher's son a few months ago, I mentioned it again because when I looked at chapter 10 to edit it, I was thinking "why the hell did I write this thing?" and then I remembered that that's why.

Actually, your idea sounds good for a dark "naruto learns the truth and leaves the leaf" story, have Naruto steal a bunch of scroll and by mistake give him a scroll describing something evil about his past (like how he was planned to be an experimental super weapon, but nobody wanted to take care of him, and even his mother didn't want him) and then have him leave to a remote village and plan an evil revenge on Konoha! Wah ha ha! it's another twisted creation of my mind!

Fushigi yugi: I was planning to check it out someday, I'm not a "all action and bombing" anime viewer, I watch almost everything (expect Shonen ai and Yaoi, which as you know, I detest!), and I espically like stories with 'real' characters in them, so I'll give it a chance in a few weeks I hope.

V-day: I didn't get any candy )…; but still, it won't stop me from completely forgetting that this day exist! And I don't even have any idea what I'm saying right now!

No questions about Narauko, eh? That's cool. Konohamaru will get his big 'entry' in a few chapters from now, I'm not exactly sure what will happen to him (I have a habit of killing supporting characters once a while), but he'll get his '15 minutes of fame', sometime, someday.

List of the teams? You actually expect me to write so many new names that I'll never use? God, that's crazy! The important indvuidals go like this: Karen-Hob-Doro in team 13, Gray and Tack are each the only important genin in their teams.

Shadowcriminal:

Mighty close, that's all I can say about your Naraku theory, a few more inchs and you'd have it.

And we really need to stop discussing history, it just reminded me that I lost 6 hours of  history lessons in the past week, so I need to get someone's notebook and copy it, fast…

Peace out, Rock on!

Synaptix:

Another close theory, but no. reincarnation stories should come to fix something that went wrong in previous life, mostly in the romantic side, but since Hinata and Naruto got together, it doesn't really work. And if Naraku is really Naruto's reincarnation, then who's Hinata's? you can say it's Karen but it'll be like 'father dating his daughter" thing, which is really disturbing. Anyway, I thought once about making this into a trilogy and have a 'high school reincarnation' fic as the ending part, with Naruto and Hinata again, but then I realized that if I'd do that, then this story is completely useless, so I moved on. But keep guessing you're on the right track.

Last note: I'm happy to say that I have many new twisted ideas for the plot line, and that this story will become even more messed up, HOORAY!


	12. The Leaf Reunites

Happy holiday, everyone!

What? You don't know what I'm blabbering about? well, in isreal, Poorim started today, it's the jewish version of Halloween, everyone is supposed to wear customes and masks and have fun, or something like that, we celebrate this day because of what has happened in the Aster scroll – which to make the story short, can be summed into a few words: "someone tried to kill us, they didn't succsed, let's eat fatting foods".

I was planning to go as gaara, but I gave up on the idea because I realized I would have to color my hair and find a large gourd, which is really troublesome, and I would also have to fill the gourd with sand, which would make it really heavy and painful to carry around… so in the end, I'm not doing anything, but I took pictures of my friend doing the dojo fight from kenshin (Saitou vs Kenshin, ep 30-31) with real sword, so it was fin

Anyway, I know you aren't here to listen to my rantings, so I'll just say two things.

The first, my favorite (and only) forum has gone through an update, and now I can't login to it, which really sucks.

The second thing concerns this story, I almost didn't get any writing done this week, and it really sucks cuz I have about a chapter planned in my head, it's just that every time I sit down to write I can't connect the ideas into a story, which really sucks, again.

And last thing, I've realized I forgot to tell you where the chapter 10 flashback fits in, it comes in the mid-start of the 'shadow of life' story, after Nruto awakes from the kidnapping for the first time, and before he meets up with Hinata, I think it's somewhere at chapter four or five, not really sure.

Special note: Fanfiction log-in service was down yesterday, so this chapter is 24 hours late…

Chapter 12: The Leaf Reunites

"4 teams died here… sixteen shinobies, they were slain after they shot the flare to the sky" Temari looked at the bodies in disgust, she could only identify the marks on their bodies as scratches made by a large creature, not large enough to rival Gaara, but defiantly not a normal kind of animal. One of the dead genins wasn't killed by the claws of the creature, but that kid suffered a horrible death as well, half of his body was sunk it the ground, the other half was burnt to crisp, the most freighting thing was that the scrolls were still there,  or their ashes to be exact, the murderer left all the scrolls untouched, she knew that he wasn't one of the demons that lived in the ruins of the leaf, "better ask Gaara, we might need to call for a cancellation of this exam" she thought to herself.

"What number is it already?" Karen asked with awe as she looked at the sky, another flare was shot to the sky, followed by a high pitched scream. "I think it was the fifth one since the sunset" hob replied, "are you o.k, Doro?" he asked his friend, "it's,,, disgusting… I can hear her screams… she never got a chance to even feel pain…" He shrugged and tried to block his ears. "anyway, the best chance we got to leave this hell alive is to get all four scrolls for each of us and then hide until we receive further instructions" Karen said, ever since Shally left she had to take the role of strategic leader, it didn't fit her personality, but someone had to do it.

***Crack***

"someone's coming! Get into positions" Karen ordered them, they all jumped to the walls, it made no sense, even with Doro concentrating on blocking his ears, Hob's nose was supposed to alert them of anybody closing in on them.

"phew, my dad would've killed me if he saw me doing this mistake, luckily no one's here to hear that" Gray said. "Exactly, we just started moving, we can't be exposed so soon" Tack responded, they both entered the room.

"It's you two" Karen jumped off the wall, facing the two shinobies from her village, "where are your teams?" she asked, Hob and Doro jumped down and surrounded them.

"We ditched them, we're quitting the exam" Gray answered, everyone else gapped.

"It's too dangerous around here, I've seen the bodies, even the jounins are afraid, we can do this exam next time" Tack continued his friend.

"What the hell? You can't be serious, you're gonna give up cuz of that?" Hob almost shouted. "Even if so, why don't you just use the flares and wait for the jounins to get you out of here?" Doro asked.

"if we do that then we'll be giving away our position to the enemy,  and he doesn't care about scrolls or the exam, we're going to get out of here by foot, as silent as possible" Gray said.

"I can't say it's a bad idea… I've been thinking about it myself" Doro surprised them all, "great,,, so I'm not alone, I think I'd join you" Hob said too.

"What happened to you all? Are you that much of cowards?" Karen blasted out on them, but then she remembered her question, "how did you avoid detection? Hob was supposed to sniff you a mile away, but we didn't know you're here until you messed up with the cracking floor"

"it's something mom gave me before we started this exam, she said that it'd be useful, it's a few scrolls that have simplified version of barriers, it's easy enough for me to use, they block all detection" Tack said in pride, Sakura was known as the best in Genjutsu in the whole sound.

"so. Are you with us or not? We're going to move slow and safely, we don't have a time limit but we plan to get out in twenty four hours" Gray answered.

"I'm in, no way I'm staying here with all the freaks around"

"I'm with you, just tell me what to do"

all the eyes were turned to Karen, she stared back at them and simply said

"go to hell, I'm going to finish this exam"

"you can't be serious! Don't you understand that there are people out there that will kill without a second thought? And without your team you won't be able to even get another scroll!" Gray shouted at her, Sasuke entrusted him with the role of her guardian, his father even told him that if necessary, he should just drag her away from danger.

"you know what?  Let's do it like this, you'll accompany us to the exit, then you can choose to quit with us or to continue, what do you think?" Hob tried; there still was the blonde guy that was after her.

"and if you choose to stay here, I'm sure Gray and Tack will gladly give you their scrolls, right?" Doro added the scrolls to the deal, he hoped that she'll go with them a bit and realize how dangerous it was for her to stay.

"o.k, I can agree for those terms, but don't try to force me out of this exam" she finally said.

"great, then we have a team, now, if you're traveling with us, there are thing you should know, our keys to survive and escape this hell hole" Gray said, then he pointed at Tack, to continue the speech.

"this place is crowded with demons, you've probably seen some of them, they are divided into two groups:

A: the beasts, they are just oversized dogs or wolves, not that dangerous, but they move in groups and are hard to detect. We avoid them as much as we can, but if we have to fight, we finish them all and only then continue moving, else they'll bring more on us.

B: the humanoid ones, they are clones of other people, just that they are demons, their looks and ability varies from each to another, but the fact is that most of them have leaf forehead protectors and that they are usually at least a chunin level enemies, they're easier to detect from the dogs, but much stronger than them, we avoid dealing with them at any cost, unless we're perfectly sure we can beat them.

Other than demons, we have the other teams to worry about, but we can probably avoid them or give them a scroll at the worst case, besides, a lot of the teams are hiding like us, so it isn't the first priority of them

The worst thing around is that murderer, we don't know much about him I've heard he's a demon but different from the rest, we know that he targets everyone he can reach, and he doesn't care about getting the scrolls, if we come close to suspect he's around, we immediately stop and go into hiding until we're absolutely sure it's safe, my mom's scrolls can make us almost invisible, but we ain't taking any chances, got that?

Any questions?"

Tack concluded his explanation, he was proud of himself, perhaps his ninjutsu skills weren't the best, but he did have a fast mind to catch and adapt to new situations.

Hob and Doro knew already about the demons already, except the fact the murderer was one too, but something was still missing.

"I have one… we've encountered a teenager boy and a small child before, they had no forehead protectors, you got any info about who they might be?" Hob asked. "They both had blonde hair, if it helps" Doro added

"no, this time, there are no participants under our age, and the oldest guy around here is completely bald, is it of any real importance?" Gray asked.

None of them answered back, "I'll take it as a no, now, if you mind, we want to rest for an hour and then move on with the plan. I suggest you do the same".

"you thought of a way to introduce yourself already? I don't think she'll be happy to hear "hey! We're both the only relatives you have, and we were hiding away in our holes and left you with the sound to grow up alone", defiantly not, she'll hate it, she'll probably won't agree even to talk with us…" Reilla said.

"You're right, but I messed up on this one, I'll take the full responsibility, besides, she's going to hear about her father, so you're probably better than me to talk with her" Neji replied, he performed the seals and looked around, there was too much demon chackra that clouded his sight to tell who is who, he turned his eyes to the vortex, it was the place that most chackra was coming from, beside it, he saw a stable lump of demon chackra.

"shit, she's near the vortex" he said sharply.

"is it that bad? What will happen?" Reilla asked, what was the outcome when two demons clashed? Total destruction was the usual answer.

"it never happened before so I'm not sure, but we better not take any chances"

Naraku sat and looked at the vortex, it was spinning as usual, sometimes it was slow, sometimes fast, but it always kept its spin. He felt that two demons were being created, he wondered how would they look like, he saw demons at the shapes of all the people his father met except for his father himself, his mother and his sister, Naraku could only think of it as some sort of divine judgment, the only three people that wouldn't hate him, and he couldn't even see a fake image of them, just a blur at his stolen memory.

the vortex focused into the pillar of chackra, a sign that the demons were fully formed, the two jumped out, Naraku looked at them with disgust, he didn't even know their names, but they were two grass nins twins, a part of the group that killed his father's mentor.

Naraku forced out two bubbles of chackra from his palm, the center of both the balls was swirling with black and red, he threw the balls at the two genins and watched them blow to bits, for some reason, he found that to be very pleasing.

Naraku stood up on his legs, he manifested himself at his demon form, "I can't let anyone escape this place…" he said to himself loudly, "it's times like this that make me wish my parents knew Genjutsu like Sakura" his feet could hold the weight of his body anymore, he crawled on his arms to the chackra pool, and sent a hand to touch it.

The feeling of relaxation washed him immediately, every muscle of his body was relieved, Naraku closed his eyes slowly, and allowed himself to fall into sleep.

"Karen, we have something to tell you" Doro started, he could tell she was suspicious of him hiding information from her, he decided that if he would give her only the good news, she won't notice him hiding the bad ones.

"Go ahead, then" she said simply, of course they had, they have been acting strangely the past few days, and both avoided talking to her, which wasn't something expected from them to do, especially since they stated so strongly before the exam they would never leave her and would always protect her.

"we met two of your relatives,,, your mother's cousin and your father's cousin" Hob jumped in, the bigger the surprise, the less chances that she'll notice they avoided talking about demons, to be exact, the small kid and the teenager with no pulse.

That announcement caught Karen off guard and hurled her into a state of shock, she had no relatives, she had no one. She grew up believing in that, she even learned to accept it, was it some sort of bad joke? She ruled that option out, Doro wasn't one for jokes, and Hob's sense of humor wasn't low enough to resort to lies such as that. "What… what do you mean?" she asked silently,

"it's true, we've met them, Hyuga Neji and Uzumaki Reilla, they have a undeniable resemblance to you, blonde hair, white eyes… they aren't lying,,, they saved us after we separated while fighting the demons"

"take me to them" Karen said in anger, "I want to meet them" her eyes burnt with rage, Uzumaki Reilla, Karen read about her and used the chackra training she wrote, she even talked to Shally about her, her teammate said it was impossible for her to be related to Reilla, otherwise, someone would have told her about it. 'Like hell they would' a tear dropped on Karen's cheek, she wiped it off quickly, before anyone could notice, "I promised I'd never cry again" she said to herself.

"it doesn't change our objective, let's get moving" Tack said, it was something his mother taught him, Sakura was in the same team as Sasuke and Karen's father, ' sometimes things can get rough and emotional, never allow it to get you, if you do, then you'll all break apart, keep your eyes about what's here and now, don't confuse the mission with your personal feelings' that was what she said, and his father agreed, the mission came first. 

"you're right, we really should start moving" Karen glared outside, she clenched her hands to fists, every feeling of loneliness she ever had, all focused in her palm, every time she went back to an empty house, every day she was lost and when she came back she' saw nobody noticed, every bit of pain and despair that ever crossed her heart. She struck the wall with her hand, "stand up, everybody, our plan just changed, we're going at full speed, I lead and you follow" she said.

Hob breathed in relief, the news about Reilla and Neji were shocking enough to make Karen forget about the fact they were holding out some information from her, "she is better off dealing with her family than with that kid" he said to himself.

Doro was thinking the same thing, but his superior sense of hearing did tell him that Karen's meeting with her family wouldn't go very peacefully, it wasn't a fist out of boredom or impatience, it was more of a fist out of pure rage.

-----Chapter 12 - The Leaf Reunites – end-------

I hoped you liked this chapter, I guess you can say that things start to heat up from now on, and you don't how much!

Anyway, shout outs (!), not too much, but I will probably continue ranting in them..

Shadowcrimianl: 

I had a history test today, I hope it went well… your guesses are close, and even right, but not exactly, you're missing one important element that says everything…

Synaptix:

What I meant in 'father dating daughter' was that if Naraku is Naruto's reincarnation then Karen would have to be Hinata's reincarnation, cuz if she isn't then there's no point in her (seeing how the reincarnation plot would take all the spotlight), but if she is, it's still that Naruto (as Naraku) is dating Karen, who's his daughter, and that would be sick and pointless … confused? Didn't I tell you that there'll be plot twists every chapter? Don't worry, I'll do a wide explanation when it's finished… but here's a hint, since I started writing this story before I published the ending of the prequel, I sprayed hints and connecting points in both stories, so if you look out for them, you'll understand the plot much better. Of course, I'm just using this as an excuse to make you read my story again, but hell, I'm bored and I'm suffering from a need to attention.

Hattuteline:

You didn't leave me! Yay, I'm so happy! Just kidding, but it's nice to see you reviewing again… I would also want to make the chapters longer, but I don't know when I'll have time to write, or if I'll have anything to write, so I'm trying to keep myself a safety net of a few chapters, so I won't need to put up bad chapters, and you wouldn't have to wait too long for a chapter…

However, I can promise that my next stories will have longer chapters, I hope you like inuyasha, cuz I've started two stories for that section..

See you all next week!


	13. Reunion of the Uzumaki Hyuga

I'm too tired and annoyed to write the whole damn thing down,  so here's the story!

Chapter 13: Reunion of the Uzumaki Hyuga

"Now, this is really weird…"

"What is it? you've started to look at two different directions all of the sudden, is something happening?" Reilla asked, anything that managed to set Neji off his goal had to be pretty big and important, she knew the Hyuga enough time to say that.

"Karen isn't by the vortex anymore, her chackra disappeared, but the odder thing is that a similar chackra was formed, it was some sort of swirly blast, it was powerful enough to seriously harm anyone of the shinobies around here, including both of us" Neji stopped moving and looked at Reilla, he decided to count on her choices.

"let's go to the source of the blast, our primary objective is to stop that crazy demon from killing everybody" Reilla said, safty of others, that was her reasoning, she would never admit the was afraid from the vortex, not only from the form of it, but also from the fact she felt the vortex was pulling her in, it was almost a… a calling.

"Somebody's coming!" Hob whispered to his group, he looked at Gray, waiting to hear his orders.

"is it a demon? Or something else?" Gray asked.

"Can't really tell, the wind has changed so I got the smell of burnt ground, but whoever it is, he's hiding his presence perfectly, he just passed the point where those 4 groups were killed, he threw some ashes to the air, that's how I spotted him. He's probably human, but I can't be sure" Hob answered.

"can you hear anything?" Tack questioned Doro.

Doro stopped for a second, "not much, I can tell that there are two people there, but they're pros, I can't even tell the gender"  Doro said, still, even the knowledge that the enemy was able to hide his presence to the point of perfection was a knowledge, and could prove vital at some cases.

"we keep moving, no stops at all!" Karen hissed backwards, she was quite sure she could handle anyone, and even if not, she wasn't in the mood to wait anymore.

Naraku was 'enjoying' himself with the rare occasion of rest, he hardly got any of it because of his body,  the demon inside of him also enjoyed the rest, it was his only chance to stop giving away his power to the boy, before he was a part of Naraku, he spent most of his time half sleeping and half arguing with his former holder, now he and Naraku were always on the verge of death, which was slightly better than what would have happened normally, where Naruku would have died with his mother, as a womb that hasn't even developed something resembling a body yet. 

"I like it…" Naraku said silently "even now, *you* and dad are helping us, I just wish I could take this power with me, so we won't have to be stuck in this shitty village after we meet her"

"I'm sorry about it, if I was real like I was once then I might have had the power to help you… but I'm merely a clone of myself now, when I was with your father I was the real me, but even then I couldn't do anything when you two most needed me" the dark voiced answered.

"don't go all softy on me, remember what mom said once? Shinobies can't allow themselves to need anything, I think it was in their secret marriage vows, the ones they took in private, dad always said it was keeping him from becoming the perfect ninja, until the marriage she took it as an insult, but then she realized what he really meant…" Naraku started, he left the sentence hanging. 

"…that their relationship was more important to him than anything, even being the Hokage or any other shit he ever dreamed about…" the demon continued, and then he spoke in a voice that Naraku heard only a few times, it was the voice that the demon talked with his father, cynical voice of dark destruction, "let's just ignore the fact that your father was officially banned from the village at that time, and only two people knew of his true identity".

"Are they still on our tail?" Gray looked at Doro and then at Karen, he didn't want her to think he was ignoring her and the fact she was currently the leader. Karen just looked at Doro, she didn't really care about whoever those two were.

"they got to the place we stayed at before, If they're really tailing us then we'll meet them in a few minutes" Doro said, even with the slight chance of encounter with the two, the whole group wanted to be ready, they turned their eyes to Karen.

"You just won't let go of it, would you? Fine, start setting up this place, we'll do them quickly and then continue" Karen said, she decided it would help her to blow out some steam she has been holding inside. The four other genins started setting a few ropes around, Karen noticed that none of them had any function, they just wanted to trick their enemies to think they've been waiting for quite a time to this battle.

"it's defiantly Karen… only the Uzumaki's chackra can act like this" Reilla said after looking at the wall, the inner part was perfectly fine, but the outer side was a total mess, the chackra was even able to scar the ground from that height. "it's almost as strong as Naruto's rasengan was when we fought, I won't want to be on the wrong side of her attacks".

"well, it's another reason for us to be extra careful when talking to her…" Neji said, 

he looked on the walls carefully, there were still signs of chackra on the walls, "whoever was with her, they left in a haste, we should get to them quickly, before that demon will have a chance to attack her".

Reilla was already on her way, for some odd reason, she had a very bad feeling about what was happening, "we messed up with this job... we allowed our feelings to lead us instead of thinking, we left too many opened issues", she whispered to Neji as he ran behind her.

"we know you're here, stop trying to sneak around and just get up here so I could kick your asses and get on with my life" Karen shouted, everybody looked at here, shouting challenges to one's enemies wasn't the way shinobies acted.

Two shadows jumped to the roof Karen was standing on, Hob and Doro recognized them, "it's them, Karen! The ones we told you about, Neji and Reilla!"  
  


"so, you're the two" Karen said silently, her friends were right, there was no place for mistake, if she didn't know better, she could even mistake them for her parents, it only made her anger rise. She clenched her fist and started the seals

"What the hell are you doing? Karen! Didn't you hear? Those are your relatives!" Gray started, he didn't like the feeling he just got, he could feel Karen's rage, the chackra she released was huge, he almost jumped in fear, and he could tell that Tack was experiencing the same thing.

"Shit! She's pretty much pissed off!" Reilla said as she watched Karen's body changing into a more vulgar, beastlike form, her special chackra made it even easier for her, not only to transform, but also to lose control and release her inner demon.

Hob watched in terror, Karen was three times her normal size now, and her hands were in the shape of claws, she stood on four legs now, he couldn't see her face, but something inside him told him he would rather not see it. But what he did see was bad enough, her back started sprouting tails out, not one tail, almost ten tails. Nine tails.

***slash***

Neji never had a chance to even close his eyes from the surprise, one moment he was staring at his niece transforming into the Kyubi, and the next moment she held a claw next to his head, only a few centimeters from it, he turned his eyes to the monster's face, the eyes were burning red, he could feel the anger inside her.

"I can't…" Karen cried to herself "why can't I do it? I should be able to… why did my hand stop? I still want to tear them open… they deserve it!" she slowly withdrew her hand back, and she turned the other way, she started running on her four legs to the opposite side.

"It seems she's coming this way, I guess I won't have to look for her anymore" Naraku said in relief,  it meant he would a few more minutes of rest, a few minutes that he could allow himself to believe he was just a kid, not a freak of any sort, and not a walking corpse.

"You didn't kill him" The kyubi said, "I know… it was you who stopped me, wasn't it?" Karen accused him, "what makes you think I have any control over your actions? I could never control you or your father. But why'd did you try to kill Neji?"

She couldn't answer.

"What is that?" she asked in surprise, she pointed her claw at a liquid of some sort, it was spinning inside a pool, she could feel chackra emitted out of it. For some reason, it made her feel as if she was back at home.

"This is the po-int where the kyubi emer-ged eight years ago, and then he destroyed the village" she heard a voice, "this is also my place of birth" it whispered silently, almost too silent for her to be able to hear.

"Who are you and why are you talking to me?" Karen asked, he was obviously not able to see her; she was a monster, a four legged nine tailed fox demon with the mind of a twelve years old girl, but how come he was able to understand her?

"My name is Naruku, and it's because you and I are of the same kind, we are the demons of this world, we can never be part of the normal society, father tried it, but he could only walk by their side, he was never a true part of them"

"Father…?" she gasped, "what do you mean?". Her eyes were now more adapted to the new form. she could see a small figure not far from her, he was still a child, a child with a empty voice and a twisted way of speech, but still a child.

"Father, you know, the male who was involved in your creation" he tried to suppress the giggling, the process of making children wasn't something an 8 years old could talk seriously about, "you're older than me, even tough you're an orphan as well, you should have someone to teach you the facts of life"

"are you joking with me or something?" she waved her now human fist at his direction, "how can you act like you know so much about me? Ha, you little twirt? I bet you never spoke to girl in you're whole fucking life!" she almost screamed at him, beneath her skin she could hear the Kyubi making some strong arguments about acting like that during an exam.

"he's right, you know, but you're right as well, this is the first time I got to talk with anyone, only a few people met me until today, but no one lived past it", Naraku said quietly, he took another step closer to Karen.

"what the hell just happened here?" Tack was the first to speak, the four genins looked at the two shinobies, the male, Neji, was on the floor, paralyzed by shock, apparently. The female, Reilla, was in almost similar state.

"it's just like what happened eight years ago…" Neji finally opened his mouth and began talking, "it's a curse that runs in their family…" his mind suddenly snapped, it could explain many things, "kiddies, you're her teammates, right? Is this the first time her 'transformation' happened?"

Hob was the first to start shouting, "of course it never happened before! What do you think she is, some sort of freakish monster!?"

"that's exactly what she is, you know, a monster which is able to destroy the whole country without giving a second thought about it, it won't be the first time something of these lines would happen, so if you care about her and wish to help her, just answer our questions!" Reilla yelled at them, Karen almost gave her an heart attack, any Uzumaki was a force to be reckoned with, any angry Uzumaki was worse than a hundred ANBU members, and a Uzumaki which held the Kyubi at any level, was more than a force, it was a pure opening for oblivion.

"yes, ma'm" Doro and Hob said in a union, they both noticed how her facial expression changed, her whisker-like birth marks curved in a way that could only express fear, an extremely deep fear. 

Tack suddenly noticed something was missing, he looked around and understood what it was, then he spoke, "Where is Gray?"

---Chapter 13 - Reunion of the Uzumaki Hyuga – End ---

A lot of people said I was stretching the whole Naraku thing for too long now, and I agree about that point, it's just that whenever I tried to write it, it always turned out so artificial, so I continued without revealing the truth about him, my planning was that you'll all figure out who is (sorta) and then when it comes, you won't mind that's it's badly written since you already know it. So far, so good.

Another thing a lot of you spoke of was the over usage of Inuyasha themes, I must say that Inuyasha is also one of my favorite anime (even though it has about 50 episodes of nothing) and I've gathered a bit of knowledge from it to the story. However, you can say the same about every anime, I'm too much influenced by animes..

I'm not gonna do shout outs (!) this time, instead, I'll answer a few questions that I've seen.

Shu-al: as the story stands now, Shu-al is out of it and I don't think he'll come back again, considering that the story will probably end before they return to the sound village. But worry not, things are gonna get so messed up that you'll forgot shu-al existed…

Chapters lengh: it might appear that the "Shadow of life" story had longer chapters, but on the general count, I think this story is a bit longer. The reason is that when I wrote shadow of life, I didn't think about chapters and editing, so there's hardly any cliffhangers or plot surprises between the chapters.

Oh, as a special treat for you guys who have to stand the long wait about Naraku, here's something I haven't done in a long while.

Name: Naraku (family name unknown, for now)

Team: isn't an official ninja.

Place of birth: leaf village.

Age: 8

Date of birth: the night between 9\10 and 10\10 (it isn't mentioned anywhere around the story, but hell, it might help you figure out who he is).

Hair: blond. Eyes: strong red. Often wears: Rags, as expected from a kid who lives in ruins. Hairstyle: messed up spikes, dirty as hell.

Specialty: as kicking, transforming into fox form, some fire jutsus.

Issues: major family deal, unsociable, body weakens unexpectedly, inner voice, dead.

First appearance: Shadow of life – Chapter 14.

Your guesses: his identity was guessed a few times in the reviews, but one serious point was missed.

I hope that helped clearing a bit of things, and just to let you know, I've finally found an ending which I'm sort of satisfied with with, so I'll probably be able to write much more now, which is good.


	14. Cry of the Dead Beast

I promised myself I'm not gonna write this, but I guess I can't keep my promises…

Another week, Another chapter, Another lousy shitload of ratings…

I'll be having two big English tests next week, the first is the final oral exam, which I need to present my lousy project to the examiner in, and the other is just a pre-final normal test… the problem is, I have no idea what's my project about, so I'm gonna fail miserably…

On the brighter side, I'm getting 3 days of from school to prepare to them, so I could watch a bit anime and read some manga!

Oh, yes, Disclaimer: if my name was Kishimoto Masashi, I would be living in Japan and drawing the manga, not writing Fanfiction…

So, for your reading pleasure, a chapter that has some fluff in it, and it's the most fluffiest thing I can write!

Chapter 14: Cry of the Dead Beast

"I can't let father down…" Gray tried to say to himself, but "I can't let Karen down…" was the phrase which kept going through his mind, he was staring at her face when she changed into that… thing. He also  knew that expression quite well, it wasn't just a killer intent, in fact, the killing intention was just second to the anger her face shown, he saw her like that once, when she was much younger. When he told her about the fact that Sasuke wasn't his real dad and that he plans on meeting his 'true' father one day.

She just looked at him with anger for a moment, he saw tears glimmering in her eyes, but then she threw a punch at his face, simply saying "some real father you got…" and walked away in rage.

"Where the hell are you? Karen!" he almost screamed, he wasn't afraid of her being attacked, anyone who would try that will quickly find himself in a bad position, what worried Gray was how she would react to herself now. His parents told him to be next to her whenever she had a problem, he usually hated that, but now he felt he must be there for her, on whatever she was going through.

-----------*----------

"Then it's settled?" The Reikage asked, he sent his best shinobi before to check the ground, she reported that it was dangerous, but she speculated that most casualties will occur from battles between shinobies, and not from the so-called natural causes that he was worried about.

"Yes, we're going to stop the exam now, and after that, martial law would be applied, if we're lucky, then all of us would be able to clear this obstacle in a day or two, the rest of you should take a few miles back, and re-group your forces" Temari said, Gaara stood behind her, he was anxious to get inside the village already. However, the rest of the team didn't share his enthusiasm, there were cases of exams where only one shinobi emerged alive, but the thought of calling off the exam never came up, it was obvious to them that something deeper than a homicidal genin was there...

the group started moving, they all looked at each other with suspicion, the last time a fight broke in the exam was over thirty years ago, but it happened in the same place the current exam was held. Furthermore than that, a few jounins were missing as well, they all went in after they've seen the flare which called them, that was the last time they have been seen.

---------*---------

"So, what you doing here, little boy? This isn't a place for someone your age to hang out in..." Karen's mind screamed to her something was wrong with the kid, something didn't quite fit into the whole picture, but she could point exactly what it is.

"This is the place we call home, I welcome you to it" Naraku answered formally.

Something continued to bug Karen, she looked at Naraku closely, "his hands are twisted a bit, and he's too much built for a kid, the hair seems almost dead, but that's normal considering he's a boy" the Kyubi analyzed inside her head, but he also knew he missed something about the kid.

"Well, I don't really eat" the kid said simply.

"Who the hell is he talking to?" Karen asked herself, maybe he was crazy? It would make sense, with all his out of place sentences and odd matter of speech.

"She's not that sharp, you know?". The child suddenly lost his balance and fell over.

That was the Kyubi's voice, but it didn't come from inside her mind, the voice was… floating in the air… 

Apparently, the kid regained his feet, he bent down and put his finger inside the liquid, a moment later the liquid changed it's color, from yellow to red. Naraku pulled his finger up, a small amount of liquid hang on it, the liquid started to form into a sphere, a perfect sphere. 

"It'll replenish your chackra, don't worry" he smiled to her and tossed it to her.

Before Karen could decide what to do, a small animal jumped in the way, it was a toad, and it collided with the bubble Naraku threw to her.

"Disrespectful worm, know your place" Naraku's shout cut through the air as his hand cut through the toad's body, ripping it apart and sending blood all over, the blood vanished before hitting the ground, a demon.

"I'm sorry, Karen, sometimes the lower demons don't know their place, and this one was blinded by the chance that he didn't notice that he was interrupting something" he said easily.

Too easily, Karen realized, the boy was too comfortable. He also called her by her name, which she hadn't yet told him. There was also the abilities he shown, when he attacked the frog, his hand moved in a blur, even for her eyes, which were second only to the Sharingan eyes of Uchiha Sasuke.

Nothing made sense, his relaxed attitude toward the fact demons were staying by their side, his adult-like body, and mostly his out of order sentences.

Out of order…

Was it really so? Somehow what he said did make sense the instant she heard it, only when she tried to analyze why he said it the words were out of place.

---*---*----*---*--

"Uchiha, we're wasting our time, we need someone who knows the terrain, didn't you say there's a guardian or something for this village?" 

"he's already gone in, I released a notice about the change of orders, but I'm not sure the bird will have the chance to get to Neji" Sasuke answered.

"So, we're going to have to scan it by ourselves, finding a maniac killer in a genin test shouldn't be that hard, right?" Temari looked at her brother with a cynical smile, he returned her an empty stare.

"That kid survived, didn't he? I pretty sure I saw his son at the exam…" he teased her.

"Sure, lee's alive, but just how many did you kill in the forest?" Sasuke asked with caution, he didn't feel secure enough like Temari to ask Gaara questions about his past.

"The rest of them are falling behind, they won't do us any good, even if we do somehow have to relay on them…" Ealla stated, good jounins were hard to find these days, they all lacked 'soul' and 'passion' towards their position as leaders and role models.

-----*----*---*--*-*--*---*----*-----

"Well, there's something we have to tell you, I guess you should know about it…" Hob silently said while looking at Doro, who nodded in response, signaling him to go on.

"What is it?" Neji asked, he knew what his duties were, he took it upon himself to prevent the history of the leaf's destruction to happen again.

"We met a little kid, he seemed to know Karen and he was really strong, he had a bit of accent, if that helps, do you have any idea who it could be?" Hob continued, he realized he didn't have a chance yet to organize his mind, everything happened to fast for him.

"I got it!" Doro suddenly shouted, "I just remembered what was so wrong about that kid" he looked at hob for a moment and watched how his friend's facial expression changed. "that's right, the kid had no pulse or body odor, I'm not sure what it means though, he can't be dead, cuz we saw him moving around, but I don't know what else can cause that" Hob said.

"Take us to the spot where you met that kid, it might be a coincidesne, but it doesn't sound right to me" Neji ordered the two sounds of team 13.

/***/****/*****\****\***\

Karen tried to look for the demon's remains, she knew it was silly of her, since demons didn't have any remains, but something still glimmered on the ground.

That liquid.

She snapped, her eyes quickly followed the strange liquid, it was everywhere around her, she was actually sitting in a small puddle all the time.

"Genjutsu" she decided, it all made sense, "that has to be it! he used to water to hypnotize me!" she screamed in her mind, it was the number one rule about fighting Genjutsu after it has come to affect, to keep oneself in action.

Karen stood up firmly, holding up three shurikans in her right hand and five more in her left. She threw the three onto the air and held tightly to the five others, she hoped that it'd buy her enough time to complete her jutsu.

Naraku glared at her with red eyes, "don't go…"

Karen almost stopped the seals, she heard something different in his voice, it wasn't a threat, or even not a plea, if anything, she could file it under 'begging'.

"don't let him get to you!"

She shouted at herself, it must have been another of his dirty tricks, she couldn't allow herself to stay anywhere near him, she quickly finished the seals, her legs began to change.

Naraku still didn't move.

"What is he waiting for? Is he even too stupid to see that the three shurikans will hit him from behind? Why won't that kid move?" she asked herself. And then she jumped, her beast like legs could carry her far away.

***Shwank* *Shwank* *Shwank***

Naraku's body slightly fell over from the impact; he felt the pain for only a mere moment, after all, what was the pain of three metal pieces when you had no working nervous system? and what was the pain of three shurikans when you can remember over twenty near death experiences, and one real death?

"Don't Leave me here, Karen!" he began crawling. 

she threw the five next shurikans at him from her mid-air leap, they hit him before he got to finish the sentence, but he still completed it, it kept ringing in her head over and over.

(----)*|*(----)

"There you are!" Gray yelled, inside him, he breathed a large 'sigh' of relief, Karen was safe, and was back to normal. He ran to her, he could see that her legs were twisted, "she must have been jumping around too much with the metamorphosis no jutsu" he remarked to himself.

"Hi Gray…" she managed to produce an almost full smile, finally, someone she could always count on." Weren't you about to leave the village and quit the exam?" she asked silently, she still heard Naraku's shout in her mind.

"I am on my way out, and you're coming with me, if I would let you get lost around here I'd never hear the end of it from my folks" he answered, "the closest exit is to the south east, can you walk by yourself?" that wasn't the truth, they could have walked back out and rejoin the other sound nins, but then they'd have to meet Neji and Reilla again.

And that was one thing Gray didn't want to see happening again.

"I can walk, but not run.., why, do you plan on carrying me around?" She asked in the most teasing voice she could.

"geez, Karen, why can't you turn to drugs like all mortals do when they're trying to avoid thinking? But no, you just have to jump on the first guy you meet and you're already half way to mating…" the Kyubi suddenly said, everyone had their ways of denial, some had romance, and some had cynicism.

Gray didn't get to see the rare occasion of Karen blushing, as he turned his face to the floor in order to hide his own red face.

"let's just go, kay?" he finally managed to say.

----- Chapter 14 - Cry of the Dead Beast – End----

Well, that was the most fluffiest Naruto thing I ever wrote, I think I read an R-rated NaruXHina story before writing this chapter, so I was in a fluffy mood….

This chapter should have flashed out Naraku a bit more, and I know that at least some of you guessed who he is correctly, and others are slowly starting to realize it…

Even though Karen and Naraku are now separated from each other, they'll have another meeting, but until then, chaos will ensue, with even more plot twists and mentally messed up people.

Peace out, Rock on!


	15. Dead Frogs & Bloody Whistles

Yohoo, Yohoo! A three week vaction is coming up! Starting the day after tomorrow, I'm a school free man for almost a month! 

Talking about school, I had an oral exam in English this week, mother fuckers, 92, the lowest grade in my class.. the bitch had to answer her damn cell during the exam so I had less time to talk and make a good impression on her, so the only thing she remembered was probably me talking about Shakespeare, which is a horrible combination…

Anyway, here's the new chapter, not much of Karen, but the tension concerning Naraku keeps piling up…

Oh, and there's a flash back from Naruto's life in the chapter as well, it fits into the Shadow of life story somewhere at chapter 3-4, when Naruto leaves the leaf village… 

Chapter 15: Dead frogs & bloody whistles 

"It sure is tensed around here" Tack chatted calmly, nobody talked about why the exam was canceled, and no one talked about what happened to Karen back inside the village.

"Good job of noticing it, Einstein, what tipped you off, beside the fact that Karen didn't come to a 300 feet radius from those two?" Hob almost yelled at him, none of the grown ups were acting normally, but Neji and Reilla out-weirdered everyone, excluding Karen and Gray.

"Or was it the fact we hardly see her anymore? I've listened to Ealla's reports before she left, she didn't have a conversation with Karen ever since the beginning of this exam" Doro added, he had the hobby of spying after the jounins meetings. He suddenly lowered his voice "there's something serious going on, I heard Neji and Reilla fighting, it appears Karen will be leaving with one of them".

"Karen's leaving?! Why?" the two spoke at once.

Konohamaru suddenly entered the conversation, it seemed that the kids forgotten he was there as well, and if they were about to hear the news, it would be better for them to hear them from an adult.

"Dunno, it's just that Neji started insisting that he should take care of her and said that he can teach her the Byakougan or something like that, and then Reilla started screaming about how dangerous it'd be to have her stay here, you know, since that guy lives at the dead leaf village… and about how much Karen needs a female role model in this fragile time of her life.. but you shouldn't take it seriously, it's not like any one of them is fit to raise a child"

"Female role model? After almost 10 years she didn't know about her? if Karen was here she'd probably go there and kill both of them for being such idiots" Hob said.

Somehow, the joke didn't sound funny, not funny at all.

---------**********---------

"this place is suddenly quite again" Gaara stated to his sister. 

"yep, hard to believe we had to cancel an exam for something like this, but we can't ignore the evidences, there something going down in here, and we have to find it" Temari answered, Neji said that the demon activities has increased during the past weeks, but surprisingly, they haven't even met one yet.

"it doesn't matter, I have orders to get to the bottom of this, and from what I was told, the Kazakage also wants this problem solved, meaning the three of us have to get some results this time" Ealla interfered. Sasuke told her to constantly remind Gaara of their mutual mission, just in case.

"Can you please stop acting like a broken record? I've heard you say the same thing in twelve different ways in the last hour, I don't know what you've been told about me, but I don't kill for fun" Gaara almost shouted, he wondered how many years it was going to be held against him, probably forever.

"Her unreasonable paranoid feeling really don't matter right now, I think we should go to that vortex thing Neji talked about, what do you say?" Temari quickly changed the subject, it was true that Gaara stopped his massacres, but he still had the sand spirit inside him, and it was better not to remind that thing about killing.

"guess so, I want to see that vortex thing anyway, all the demons are supposed to come out of it, so it's the logical place to start looking after a demon" Gaara said, the leftovers of the first person to ever beat him, that had to be something to see.

---------*************--------------

"a lost chance" Naraku looked at the sky, the shurikans were still stuck inside his body, not that he could ever care.

"I totally blew it, didn't I? It's something that could only happen once in a lifetime. And now it's all over, I'm stuck here, and nobody will ever come back to this waste" as always, no one was there to answer him, the only intelligent being he knew was too busy at keeping his body intact, the five meters managed to crawl before Karen escaped his sight proved to be almost fatal to him.

"Just stop whining already, think of what your father would have done"

The shurikans cut even deeper into his body, his sight turned blurry, the world was fading from him.

"What would my father do? Probably get up, travel around for a year or two and forget about the whole thing. But if you hadn't noticed, I'm stuck here; I can't even leave the dead village, let alone go wondering around the world like every normal member of the family does"

"Well then, I guess I'd just start talking until your body rots away and we're both dead, what do you say about it? to die the same way you've lived, the same way you were born? Is this the peak of your life? A dead body in the middle of nowhere, not even able to speak properly? Is that what you'll amount to? I gave you a second chance to live, are you going to use it or you rather give up?"

A shurikan cut through his chest, the 8 year old blood started flowing out, drop by drop. He never saw his blood before, nothing ever hurt him as much as this, his only opportunity, and he messed up with it.

"I'm not like my father or anyone, I can't just walk away, he was a free spirit, I'm bonded with this place, forever" he managed to get the words out.

---------twenty five years ago--------

_What do I have to stay here for? I never had a family, I even killed my friends, one after one, how long will it be until I kill Sakura or Lee? And who will come next?_

_I can't even say I have memories to cling onto, just countless nights of laying in my bed, looking at the sealing and wishing for a change which never came._

_Perhaps I'm doing the village a favor? It has no use to me, I'm just like the hokage's necklace, I bring death to all those around me._

_When I woke up, the first thing that caught my attention was the smell of blood, both human and monster blood, somehow, even when everybody else dies, I'm still alive, and this day, I passed even my own records, two monstrous creatures were dead as well, one died because he threatened  the village, the other died because what I forced into him._

_Damnit__, I can't stand the old man's stare, I've never seen him this way, not that it should surprise me, I got his best, possibly only, friend dead, he wasn't a guy to make much friends, maybe the toad was the only one other than Tsunda he had to talk with since the forth died…_

_The forth, it's kinda funny, he never knew me, and he still died because of me… the even funnier thing is that it all happened on the day I was born and I'm still not sure if he was the first to die because of my presence… how many others have my mother killed just so that I could be born at the "right" spot?_

_Well, anyway it is, I'm not going to stay here anymore, I'm never going to come back, the world is large enough, I can start traveling today and continue doing so until the day I die._

_-----------------()--------_

_I can't stand it anymore, everyday, doing the same thing, sitting and looking at the bridge, the fox has finally answered to me, but he's not much of a conversation material, but maybe it's just me, it seems much more reasonable than believing a immortal creature could live like this… I guess that some people are just born without the ability to be with someone, it might be a genetic fuck, I know my mother had serious problems with that…_

_The sound village isn't that much also, Orochimaru is away and Kabuto is the leader, not that I'd want anything to do with that creep, he's probably mad as hell that he lost his chance at Sasuke… and Kabuto, he's just a lost lamb, he was supposed to be the personal doctor of that maniac and now he's burdened with responsibility over a whole village…_

----------Back to regular time---------

"we're getting closer, there are remains of chackra here…" Gaara stated calmly, demon or not, Gaara of the desert wasn't a guy to crawl in fear.

"I can see the source" Ealla's voice tingled with excitement, a chance to see what where did all the new demons came from, a chance to get her self a name as the legendary sound who whipped out the new threat. 

The three stopped jumping, even ninjas made noise when jumping on roofs, and something in the air told them they weren't alone…

Temari started moving her hands, signaling to the other two what to do, 'someone's there, go from the wings, we act on my command', they both nodded to her and started moving.

She walked step by step, carefully avoiding making any sound, she could know identify what she first saw, a small boy laying on the ground, he seemed to be injured.

She took a few steps closer, he still hasn't made any sign that he noticed her, she was already able to touch him, she could almost mistake him for being dead, if not for the blinkings, his chest didn't move, and he had a shurikan pointing out of his body.

"kid, are you ok?" she laid a hand on his forehead, there was no head band.

Naraku's eyes suddenly opened, he recognized the woman immediately, a sand ninja, Temari, older sister of Gaara. His instincts took over him, he jumped ten feet back, close enough to the vortex, the water took effect right away, he pulled out the shurikan and smiled.

"I guess my genes will never let me die on combat" he hissed to himself, he positioned himself into his mother's fighting stance, it was useless without a Byakougan ability, but his special conditions didn't even require him to guide the chackra towards the vital organs, demonic chackra was deadly enough on it's own.

"come on, show me what the sand has" he called her.

The first thing Temari did was to jump backwards, dead children weren't supposed to get right up and challenge adults to fight. But shinobies were supposed to be ready to fight anytime, so she pulled out her fan and threw at him a small gust of air, even his hair stayed in place. "Ealla! Gaara! It started!" She usually had Gaara hiding in the background to give him an opportunity to lunch a surprise attack, but she didn't believe she'll need it this time.

Ealla started her attack by throwing a kunai towards Naraku, the first attack was usually to test the enemies speed and ability, 

"Don't underestimate me! Fight me with everything you got!" Naraku shouted at them, he had over twenty ways to avoid the kunai, so he decided to use the most impressive one he could perform. He quickly drenched his left hand in the liquid on the ground and raised it to the air, the liquid spanned itself into a sphere of black and red, and from the ball a toad appeared, grabbing the kunai with it's mouth and handing it over to Naraku.

Temari used that time to prepare her own jutsu, she opened her fan to it's full length and started performing the seals, it was an attack she worked on since her loss at the chunin exam years ago, on the surface it was just throwing many shurikans by using her fan to direct them, but the true attack was on the ground, when the fan slammed the ground it created a shockwave, and while the enemy was focusing on escaping the  shurikans, the shockwave stunned them, leaving them vulnerable to a real killing attack.

"one, two, three, four…" Naraku started counting each shurikan he struck down with his newly acquired kunai, "… seventeen, eighteen, nineteen.." the shurikans didn't come in straight lines, they were in the air routes, they could pass by his body three times before striking, a wind attack at it's best.

The shockwave hit him from below.

Ealla was the next to attack, her enemy was down on the ground, which would make her technique even more effective.

The first stage was to throw one of Konohamru's sound amplifying potions on the target, it would make his whole body less voice resistant, the second stage was the actual jutsu, the infamous "bloody whistle", which sometimes left the target beheaded.

She performed the seals and touched his foot, every part of the body was enough to kill with that jutsu, actually, the farther than the head the better, it only gave the vibration more time to become wilder.

-----Chapter 15 - Dead frogs & bloody whistles – End-------

Well, Naraku is in a bit of a bind here, wonder what's going to happen to him?

Unfortunately, I didn't have much writing time the past week, but I'll try to write more during the vacation. There won't be any shout outs (!) this week either, maybe they'll be back next week.

Oh, and here's a special treat for all they guys who are complaining about me stretching out the Naraku buissness, chapter 16's preview:

_"Very impressive, kiddo.__ What's your name?" Gaara asked, it was a while since he saw that kind of chackra movement._

_What's his name? It was the first time he was asked that question, he didn't want to start this new part of his life with lies, and he didn't feel like making the "it's only proper to give your name first" speech, it would be too Sasuke-like. So he just told him the truth._

That's it for today, see ya in seven days!


	16. Fight, Battle, War

Greeting to all my favorite readers, this is Death Boo writing to you from the border of Tiredland and Murderousland…

As you can guess, I'm feeling tired and murderous today, this is a result of my new (and first) real job, which is cleaning up a bakery. I'll try to make the story short, it's a vacation, It's a bakery, and it's spring cleaning time…

Here's the longer version, as a special treat: the Passover (Easter) vacation has started, and I got a job in a bakery, but since it's the Passover (the mother of all "they tried to kill us, they failed, let's eat" holidays) the owner wants to do some cleaning, so in my first week, I had to do stuff that no one has done there in about six months, so I'm tired as hell, dirty as hell, and I'm feeling murderous just because I'm that kind of guy.

Oh, yeah, story…

Chapter 16: Fight, Battle, War.

"Shit!" Naraku thought, the he felt the movement in his leg, and saw the look on Ealla's face, it was a finishing jutsu, and from what it seemed, if he wouldn't be able to stop it, he'd lose his life.

He called the chackra to his palm and struck his nee when he felt the vibration getting there, he knew too well that a wound from his demonic chackra would take a few weeks to properly heal, but still, it stopped the jutsu, he was safe. For now.

"Who'd believe he would be able to figure out the counter so fast?" the only way to stop the bloody whistle jutsu was to interrupt the sound, either by cutting the body open or by radically changing the chackra circulation.

"Very impressive, kiddo. What's your name?" Gaara asked, it was a while since he saw that kind of chackra movement.

What's his name? It was the first time he was asked that question, he didn't want to start this new part of his life with lies, and he didn't feel like making the "it's only proper to give your name first" speech, it would be too Sasuke-like. So he just told him the truth.

"The name is Uzumaki Naraku"

--------*****---------*******-----------

"Squads three and four, start spreading out, squads six and eight, take your places, one n' seven, cover the escape traces, two and five, you're coming with me, 'hidden gunshot' operation starts in 30 minuets"

Technological advancement changed the world, it meant better machinery, better weaponry, better harvesting tools, better everything. But it also meant a different distribution of power, the people now knew who was sending them into wars and who was taking their food, they knew who was to blame for their bad situation, so they revolted, even the strongest feudal lords had to give up and listen to the villagers demands, old sources of power were crumbling, so why should the ninja villages be any difference?

It made perfect sense, it was justice, the shinobies were outdated, they were OK for the old times, but toady? Their ways were wasteful and cruel, overcharging the customers, having kids handle diligent situations, teaching children to kill from the day they were born. The times demanded replacement.

"Commander, we got the green light from headquarters, and all the troops are ready" Amber nodded at the old man; she was one of the youngest members of the force, and certainly the youngest to become a commander. Only 24 and already an active leader of one of the most important missions the 'night hound' ever had to deal with, the attacking of the chunin exam.

She loaded her rifle, that model's killing range was 500 meters, the highest effective range of a shurikan was 250 meters, when it was hurled by the last hokage of the leaf village. All the conditions were in their favor, the element of surprise, superior equipment, and the ninjas would have no where to run to or hide, it would be like a shooting range. The chunins were the middle rank of the ninja society, so if this mission would be 100% successful, then the future generation of experienced ninjas and some elite shinobies will be dead by the end of the night. 

And as a bonus, Amber knew that two of the kages, the leaders of the hidden villages, were there as well.

-----------*********-----------

"The name is Uzumaki Naraku -

Son of Uzumaki Naruto and Hyuuga Hinata"

--------*********---------

Of course, the ninja villages won't turn to history just because of one mission, the only way to truly end their reign will be to get them out of business, day by day, the lords will see that the "night hound"s can do anything the ninjas could do, just better and cheaper, no more exposing their secret documents to underage children, no more having to entrust their objectives and cash just so that some kids could train, better results, better morals, simply better.

Even if today's mission would be a failure, the downfall of the hidden villages was already set; the night hound was only one of the new agencies, the largest and the strongest, but still only one out of many. And even if somehow, the shinobies would be able to counter their attack, all the survivors would be welcomed by any other agency, it was only business, the competition between them never got personal like the shinobi villages.

But no matter how she tried looking at it, no soldier could stand against a ninja, even she would probably be beaten if she had to face one of them alone, even most of the genins could defeat her in marital arts, or taijutsu, as the ninjas called it. The agencies strength lye in numbers and equipment, not in individual skills. 

"Get your asses moving, the operation starts now" 

-----------------**********--------------

"Impossible.."

"It can't be!"

"They are dead!"

"That's not entirely true, they both live on… all the demons you've seen are my father's ISAN (legacy, leftovers, inheritance)" Naraku looked for a moment at the vortex.

"and this body…" he touched his leg, he was still a bit off because of the chackra he forced inside it, "is modified from them both".

"then what does that make you?"

"a monster…"

"just like me…"

"I guess it does make me a monster, does it really matter?" Naraku asked them, one more demon, one less demon, what change did it make?

"It doesn't change anything, you know. Did you kill the genins in the exam or not?" Ealla asked.

"Do you have any doubt? You certainly attacked me pretty fast… but yes, I'm the one who killed them, and if it makes you feel any better, it was nothing personal against them" Naraku answered swiftly, kids always learned new languages fast.

"Then this place will be your grave. Is there something you wish us to tell someone?' Temari stated, opening her fan to show the three stars.

"No need to, I'll tell her personally" he tried to smile, but he was getting worried, faced against three enemies, all of them highly experienced, and without any advantage over them.

"I'm getting impatient, shall we begin?" Gaara looked at Naraku, he didn't see many people as qualified to be his rival, now even more than in his childhood. But he couldn't resist a chance to fight with an offspring of the one man who beat him.

"Just remember that you're the one who asked for it" Naraku crossed his hand into the seals, he was also intrigued to see how would he stand against another demon. 

"Drilling spear of Sand no jutsu!"

"Demonic earth strike no jutsu!"

In an instant, the sand materialized in the air, forming a solid, packed spear, which immediately flew on to Naraku.

It met with a rock, not just a rock, a hard, stone tough boulder, which appeared out of nowhere, covering  Naraku like a cocoon.  

"it won't save you" Gaara yelled, he knew how much his absolute defense effected his hearing sense, so he guessed that he'd have to scream to get the message over.

And then the drill came into action, inch by inch, digging into the cocoon, closer to the inside, closer to where the target was.

"I'm not done yet, either" Naraku whispered in reply.

The stone pillars came out of the ground, pushing away the drilling spear, and forcing Gaara to jump back.

"very impressive, young boy, but just defensive jutsus won't win you your life" Gaara said, thinking about his next move.

"If you think that you can even touch me, bring it on!" Naraku yelled to him, and then began forming another series of seals. "This jutsu is one that my father invented, I'm sure you'll find very… surprising" he explained, it was another one of the sneak attack techniques Naruto was so fond of.

Red chackra began spinning around Naraku, crushing rocks and raising dust and water to the air, scarring the ground around him with the radical waves of chackra.

"Where is he going to come from?" Ealla asked herself, it was a tactic many demons often used, it was wasteful on chackra yet amazingly effective, but only when you didn't know what to expect. She began tying strings to her kunais and shurikans to her glove.

"Above!' she shouted in her mind, and threw the projectiles to the air, totally ignoring the whirling chackra beside her.

"Damn! The chackra won't distract them for very long now! And I can't dodge all the projectiles…"  Naraku thought from his falling position in the sky, if he would block them, then they'll fall to the ground and alert them of his whereabouts, but getting hit will have the same effect. "I have to push them even farther into the sky!" he decided, and quickly hit them with his elbow, earning small scratches, but not anything that will be noticeable by the shinobies below.

"Three, two, one… Pull!" Ealla counted from the moment she felt the strings tighten over he glove, it meant someone changed the course of the weapons, and that he was only 30 feet above them, so she pulled the strings, bringing the weapons down on Naraku with a whistling sound.

"Damn, they're coming back!" Naraku cursed in his mind, it already messed up his plans, now he had to relay on defending from the shurikans and kunais, while keeping track of his target. He turned around and began deflecting them.

***Cling, Swish, Chiwishh***

"18 feet…" Ealla marked to herself and focused chackra to her legs, preparing to jump.

***Pufff***

Her body left the ground with amazing speed, in a mere moment she was already at Naraku's height, with a kick heading towards the boy's head.

***Trach***

Naraku knew exactly what effects would the kick have, a jolt to the brain, messing with all his senses in the good case, or leaving him unconscious in the worst-case-scenario.

***Buff!***

Naraku fell to the ground, he barely escaped getting hit in his head, but he wasn't able to avoid the kick entirely. "Damn Bitch! How did you know I was coming?" he shouted at her.

"Well, I do have to admit it was very nicely done for a kid you age, but you don't stand a chance against an expert like me. The dust and rocks were a cover to the fact you aren't there anymore, it's a tactic widely used by demons and people with high chackra stamina, you lead us to believe your going to use a ninjutsu while you used to the spinning effect of the chackra to push you to the sky. The question was whether you'll come from above or below, but it was answered when I realized that amount of rocks in the whirl wasn't increasing, which if you'd dug a cave, it would highly increase.

And then I used the shurikans to measure your distance from me, and to attract your attention when I'm attacking, too bad you managed to see me in the last second and change your position to defend your head, it could have been a devastating kick if you hadn't"

"So, I have to keep an eye on you as well, this seems to be getting more and more fun every second" Naraku lied, trying to keep his voice cold and emotionless, he wasn't sure if he could deal with Gaara alone, and another powerful enemy didn't make things any easier.

"So the Uchiha wasn't bluffing when he said Ealla was good for this job…" Temari decided inside her head, after the first shock, the situation didn't look so bad. After all, they were three adults, and he was just a kid, weird and scary as he might be, but still no match to them.

-------//////////--------////////---------

A loud voice was heard in the Sound camp, followed  by many other loud voices, catching everyone by surprise, only a few knew what that sound meant, but every single kid could have recognized the screams, the ninjas best friend and adversary, death itself.

All around the camp, people began falling to the ground, holding their chest, their hand or in worse cases, not holding anything, just falling lifelessly.

"Is it another shinobi village?", "Where they hell are they?", "Where are the ANBU?" 

All the questions were directed to one person, the sound kage, who was already at the verge of losing his calmness,  sending orders, receiving the first bits of information, fending back the complaints over the lack of intelligence, it was amazing how people could find time to criticize him in the middle of the crisis.

"It's no good, all the anbu were gathering information inside the leaf village ruins, we don't know anything about the enemy! Issue all ANBU right now to go and obtain any possible knowledge about the situation, and have all the others stand their ground!"

He was one of the few who recognized the loud sound, a gunshot, hundreds of them, the tool that could take out any shinobi from a large distance, even when handled by the simplest of men.

Another one of the few who knew about rifles was Konohamaru, and his reaction was slightly more rushed. "Get down! All of you! Use solid matters for cover!"

They did as he ordered, tough it wasn't really required, the natural instinct of jumping away from bullets kicked in pretty fast. "What the hell is it? Are we under attack?" Hob shouted over the gunfire, covering his head from the shards and his nose from the gunpowder smell.

"Damn! We didn't think they'll attack at least for five more years! We aren't ready!"

Konohamaru screamed, it was his responsibility, prepare the sound village to an assault by any kind of agency, he was supposed to be the absolute best in countering them, it was planned to teach minor alchemy no jutsu at the ninja academy starting from next year! Had they given him a mere six months and he could have instructed the jounins, that have would reduce the losses from any attack by at least 90 percent!

"Listen to me, kids! Don't think about retaliation now! You'd die before getting within 300 feet from them! Right now we need to concentrate on escaping the camp, it's a death trap for us…" He ordered them, as a jounin instructor husband, it was his duty to take over the genin teams until his wife would come back.

"To leave the camp? Why should we do that? Won't it be more logical to stay with all the other ninjas and attack together?"  Hob asked.

"Believe me, I know what I'm doing, we've set the camp this way to protect ourselves from any ninja invasion, it's an open field from which we can see anyone coming close. But at this situation it means that they can shoot us from afar and we can't get near them…" Konohamaru explained quickly.

"Then what should we do, Sensei?" this time it was Tack who asked the question, his cover was the least efficient, merely a rock, it protected him from the bullets but the work shards were cutting his arms and legs.

"We'll go to the safest place around for shinobies to hide in…" Konohamaru turned his gaze towards the place of his birth, "we're going back to the leaf village"

----Chapter 16 – Fight, Battle, War --- End---

Well, was that enough action for you guys (and girls)? Naraku fighting, and a new plotline introduced, not to mention that Konohamaru is back in the business…

Oh, yeah, I tried to make the battles as ninja-like as possible, I think I did a good job, combining ninjutsu and strategy, if you need explanation on anything, just tell me about it in a review so I'll explain it better.

On a completely different note, I've got about ZERO writing done this week, I blame the world! And the bakery (from my ranting above!)


	17. Hyuuga eyes and Sarcastic Demons

Hello there, not much ranting to do, my week was filled with me being at home, reading Manga (I read up to volume 18 of inuyasha, and a few volumes of Salad days), watching occasional anime, and not watching NGE (which is a bad thing, since I planned to watch it all again this vaction) the only bad thing which happened this week was my lack of going-to-the-gym.

Oh yeah, the story, here's the new chapter.

Chapter 17:  Hyuuga eyes and Sarcastic Demons

******  before the attack *****

"Really? Shu-al almost ate Hob's dog? that's cool!" Gray shouted in fake enthusiasm, tales of their genin missions wasn't what nor Gray or Karen were interested in, but they weren't ready to talk about anything serious yet, Gray wasn't sure if he'll ever be.

"What are you thinking about when you have that look on your face, Gray? Sometimes your shirnk you eyes a start chewing your hair, doesn't you mother scold you doing so?" Karen asked, it wasn't something she remembered from the academy, and he didn't have enough split edges for it to be an old habit, it must have been something new.

"I am?" he just noticed that he really was chewing his hair; it was defiantly something that started on the last few days, but no one other than Karen seemed to notice it, maybe it was because he did it only around Karen…

"Yes, and that's really annoying, so if you've something on your chest, then get rid of it already, you aren't pretty when your mouth moves around so much, you're they guy who looks better with his mouth closed in a relaxed pose, so spit it" Karen told him sharply.

"it's just that… I mean.. you and what happened there… with the village.. and you know, the thing and that stuff…" Gray couldn't found the words that he looked for, someway to talk about what happened to her without talking about it. He suddenly realized that he was chewing his hair again.

"I get it" Karen said simply, she stretched her right arm out and combined her left hand into the tiger seal. Her right arm started to glow and shake, and then it grew bigger, and much feral-er, "is this what was bothering you?" she asked him, her head held down.

"This, the metamorphism no jutsu? No way, you've done it since you were in the academy, I know it's a rare skill for a kid our age but it's nothing that I haven't seen before…" Gray replied, but he felt something was different, even with Karen's awful chackra control, she released way too much chackra for such a jutsu, and he knew she practiced this particular jutsu more than any other skill she had. 

Then she raised her head, and he saw what was wrong, her eyes.

No longer did she have the ever calm pearl white eyes that he learned to associate with her face, something changed in them.

They were radiating red, like they were about to change into full red eyes but something was stopping them.

"Is this what's bothering you? That I can change my hand without ninjutsu?" it started out gentle, the only clue about her mental state was her still shaking hand, "That I can transform my whole body without trying to?!" Then she started to scream, tears flowed to her eyes. "That I can turn into a fucking monster without knowing it!?! or is it because I'm that monster!!?" Karen started shaking with her whole body; the red radiation from her eyes grew stronger. She started to change again, legs, arms, cheast, even her face; everything was one step closer to the fox state.

But then came the shots.

Four bullets, a half transformed demon wasn't a hard target to hit, one gazed her shoulder, two cut through her right arm, and one into her left leg's bone.

It stopped the transformation immediately, leaving a shattered bleeding shinobi on the ground, and another panicked ninja without any idea what to do or how to react.

So he did the only thing he could think of, take Karen with him and run away, but the question was where to run? An attack by almost invisible enemies from over 500 feet away? He wouldn't live to get to them, let alone fight them. The sound camp? They seemed to be under the same condition, staying at the same spot? Worst option. The only clear place seemed to be the one place he swore not to return to.

"hang in there Karen, it might be a bit painful, but you'll have to deal with it, cuz I can't do anything about it until we get to somewhere safe" he told her, then he diverted his eyes, and below the gunshots, he whispered "leaf village, here we come" he started to crawl, dragging Karen besides him, he threw a glance at her wounds. A prediction came to his mind, by the time they get to the village, she might lose her arm from blood loss; 'got to keep moving" he reminded himself.

*********-**********

"Somehow" Gray muttered "we made it", they passed into the leaf village, and Karen still seemed to be in somewhat good shape, still conscious and her bleeding miraculously stopped, now all that was left was to find a place to hide until the trouble pass, or at least until they know what exactly happened.

"How much time has passed?" Karen asked silently, it might have already been over. 

"Not much, it's been an hour since it started, but I think it's still going on, I can hear a bit of gunfire. I'll check it once I've taken care of your leg and arm, so just try to be silent for a while…" Gray said.

"Don't bother, I'll be fine soon, this isn't enough to kill me. There are probably other sound that came here to hide, go look for them" she commanded him, he tried to protest but a quick glare from Karen stopped him.

"don't worry, they'll never be able to find me…" she started a series of seals, "it's called demon leaf seed jutsu, don't look too much into it, it's complicated to explain" the chackra began whirling around her, her eyes sent out the red glamour again, but this time she didn't change.

From Gray's point of view, the first noticeable effect of the jutsu was that she was getting shorter, when he lowered his look he saw that she wasn't shortening, she was assimilating into the ground, it seemed to him that her body turned to liquid and was soaked by the ground, he tried to grab her hand but when he finally moved only her head was above the ground.

"don't worry, it's perfectly safe for me, if you want to call me then pull out the weed, it'll start growing once I'm inside the ground" she said at perfect ease, she felt surprisingly good inside the ground, somewhat pure and clean.

  "It's even better than usual, must be the water" the Kyubi transmitted his thoughts to her, it was one of his powers, but combined with a forbidden leaf trap. Karen was the second human ever alive to transform her entire body to chackra and to be able to reform it again.

"Weed? She probably meant flower" Gray examined the place Karen just disappeared from, he resisted the urge to dig in the ground and to look for her, and something did grow on that spot, so he figured the jutsu has been successful, even if it was a sunflower and not just a weed, "flowers are better than weeds, aren't they?" he thought to himself.

Seeing how Karen was probably safe, he got on his way to the insides of the village, searching for other sound shinobies.

--------=---------=------

"You say that we can be travel all around the village with this jutsu, but how am I supposed to do it without being able to see anything? I can barely feel slight winds from above; I'm not in any condition to move around…" Karen said in a disappointed tone, no wonder this was called seeding jutsu, she felt like she had to wait for days until something would happen.

"Of course, it's a trapping skill, you aren't supposed to be able to move much around… but there's an exception for you,  try looking around with your Byakougan" The fox told her, it seemed like an impossible idea, how was she supposed to perform seals without hands? But nevertheless, she tried, and it somehow came out naturally.

Something was different, she knew that her Byakougan eyes were open, but it wasn't the same as always, instead of just seeing everything in great perspective, she was now able to see something new, it glowed in her eyes with a strange feeling, the strange thing was that she could see a few of those things…

One was getting farther and farther away from her, another four were much further away, and they seemed much 'larger' than the first one, the sixth one was also around them, but it seemed so enormous that everything else faded in comparison, and it seemed to be spared around most of the village in small quantities.

Karen suddenly noticed another thing, those things were different from each other, and not only in 'size', the large one shared similarities with one other out of the four near it, they seemed to be much more chaotic than the others, another one of the four seemed to be made of many other 'things' - over millions and billions of 'things' working together to fulfill some common goal, the other three, the one getting away from her and the last two of the four, she couldn't see anything special in them.

Her 'vision' began to widen, more feelings entered her sphere, most of them were about the same size and form as the one who was getting away from her, some were larger, though none came close to the big chaotic one, and a few even had different special forms and one shard the chaotic qualities of the huge source, but the chaos seemed to be much 'weaker' a slender version of it. Karen suddenly realized that some signals were disappearing or losing something within them.

"do you mind telling me what is it that I'm seeing, oh, mighty and sarcastic sadistic demon?" She mentally hissed, figuring it was better to get the jokes and stinginess out of the way as soon as possible.

"Mighy and Sarcastic sadistic demon? That's something I haven't heard yet… and I'd never dream about ripping you away from the surprise, just start moving somewhere and you'll probably figure it out along the way…" He lied sarcastically, he guessed that he'd need at least a few hours to get used to the new Hyuuga vision.

"Figures, you can't lend me a hand at anything, can you?" She said.

"You know, you're acting more like your father each day, and I don't mean it in a positive way…" he hissed back.

---------=-------------------=-------------

Naraku could barely keep up with the attacks now, even though it was always the same, Ealla or Temari would attack, and then Gaara would try to catch him off guard, the sand forced Naraku to jump around much, it was getting more and more tiring to keep an eye from ambushes, he seriously began considering running away, as much as he hated that idea.

"No! Father never ran away from a fight, and so will I!" he jumped to the air and began the seals, when he crushed to the ground, a small cloud of smoke rose from the ground. Gaara, Temari and Ealla couldn't see him anywhere.

"_Nine crushing tails of doom_" he whispered silently.

Now, he was in control.

-------=-----------=--------

Again, as much as Karen believed it was impossible without limbs, the moment she thought about the concept of walking, she felt a slight movement, the next few minutes were try-&-fails until she finally believed she got the movement abilities right in her new form, then she started advancing to the center of the leaf village, closer to the point where she felt the large chaotic 'thing', she decided to check each one and one of those sources, just to get the general knowledge about what to expect.

In less than a minute she got to her first target, she followed him from below the ground, at those moments she was close enough to recognize his chackra output, Gray. She focused some chackra to her Byakougan eyes, her sphere of 'sight' grew tremendously, she was able so sense hundreds of sources again, now she focused on the one that seemed to act just like Gray's signal, she guessed it would have to be Sasuke, Gray's adopting father and role model, it was only normal for them to have similar chackra output.

Her next targets were the four large signals, and the one huge source. 

-------*----------*---------

The first tail was aimed at Temari, the black fire rained from the skies onto her, it didn't come by surprise though, the heat from the tail was so intense that it would alert any being in a radios of 100 meters of it's coming, but that never mattered, even most of the legendary demons covered in fear in face of the fiery tail. However, those reactions only happened when it was used by the nine tails demon, when used by Naraku, it was simply flame jutsu, which was easily countered by Temari. 

"not good enough, boy!" Temari shouted as she cleaned her fan from the sand she had to put on it to block the flames, she noticed that the fan's edge was blackened a bit by the fire, but it was still in good condition.

The second tail of electricity was met with Ealla, Naraku didn't expect her to be able to change her kunais into metal and reshape them, with a simple alchemy jutsu, she managed to divert the lightning strike from her to a nearby large boulder. The stone exploded immediately in impact, but the attack has already lost it's power by then.

The other tails met the same fate, all were overcome by the three jounins, even the illusion of the seventh tail was crushed by Gaara's spell of fake sleep. And the soul craving ninth tail hadn't fulfilled its goal either, with no spare immortal soul, the Kyubi couldn't contribute his part to the jutsu and cause it to work as it should, it was practically useless.

--- Chapter 17:  Hyuuga eyes and Sarcastic Demons --- End -----

so what did we have this chapter?

On one hand we got some relationship between Karen and Gray, an improvement of Karen's Byakougan skills, and a new jutsu…

Just to clear a bit of the jutsu, the general idea was taken from the demon brothers (the start of the anime, maybe episode six-seven…) and was twisted to a flower to fit a leaf village jutsu, I chose to use Sunflower because HINA in Hinata means sun (Hinamaru- suncircle) and the deal with the weed was about underestimating yourself, I was under the effect of some Hinata-based fanfic…

Other than that, we got another glimpse on Naraku, which seems to be in a pinch now… don't you all wonder what'll happen to him?

Now, I realized I forgot to explain about Naraku last chapter, so here it comes:

The idea for his 'birth' came from the Berserk Manga (serious spoilers ahead):

DON'T READ UNLESS YOU WANNA BE SPOILED!

In the manga, Grifith takes over the body of Gatts and Cascka's baby and reshapes it to his old body.

END SPOILER SEASON!

The other source of inspiration came from Trigun, when I stared writing the story, I was in the middle of my  4th  viewing of it, so originally, Karen and Naraku were supposed to end like Vash and Knives, but I decided against it, seeing how it would make no sense for two siblings who never met to start a death match right away..

So anyway, in the last chapter of "Shadow of Life", there were two mentionings of spirits, one coming out of Naruto's body, creating the vortex, and by extent, all the demons in the village. 

The other came out of Hinata, or rather, her unborn child (Naraku), which was also the reason why she woke up that night (pregnant sickness, yay for the women!), but since Naraku hasn't fulfilled his cosmic goal (becoming a character in my story), his Kyubi spirit took used Naruto's and Hinata's bodies to keep Naraku alive.

However, since the Kyubi is doing that, he can't do anything else inside of Naraku, so every time he speaks, Naraku loses control over the body and loses his balance. This doesn't apply to times when Naraku touches the vortex (the Demon fox who lived inside Naruto), because at those times, he gets chackra from the original kyubi, so it strengthens him.

I hope that made things a bit more clear to you guys, and here are the Shout outs (!):

hi this is a flame: wow, my first flame, if you would have signed with your own account (or even a real nickname) I would have gone through the trouble of explaining you how much of an idiot you are, but since you decided not to, I'll keep this short by saying that if you have to flame me about something, there are more relevant things than the pairings to do so.

Eikou: well, my life is a twisted play of irony and sarcasm… actually, I'm quite happy that it's Passover, if it wasn't I'd still be stuck in that bakery, polishing the damn floor for minimum wages… you got the Naraku part right, he is using his parents remains to move around, talk about being attached… and the Gaara Naraku fight; I'm really proud about that one, allow me to brag when I say it's a different level from other fanfiction fights, and even par with the original fight scenes…

Shadowcriminal: well, didn't I tell you guys to expect the plot to continue it's twisting? I'm really like doing those stuff…  and you were right about Naraku, just not completely, you've missed the part that Naraku really is Karen's brother, not just by circumstances..  Peace out, Rock on!

Oh, plz review, the flamer said that 57 reviews for 16 chapers is sad, prove him wrong!


	18. The Sunflower and the Black Rose

The  Passover vaction is over and I'm back in school, and it sucks.

I'm low on anime (I watched only two episodes over the past three days) and really low on energy (the bakery job keeps sacking away my sleep), but the worst thing, is that I haven't been to the gym for about a month, so I feel extra fat and out of shape.

Chapter 18: The Sunflower and the Black Rose

"I can't keep up with them…" Naraku thought to himself, since the first phase of the fight he was unable to move his leg, and he was already hit in most other body parts. "I can't let them get me… I've got to do something!" he screamed inside his mind while blocking another one of Ealla's kicks, he never imagined the difference between fighting demons and between fighting real-life jounins, it was too much for him.

"Do it" Tamari signaled to her brother, he smiled to her and hit the ground, "tentacles of sand jutsu" he whispered, he almost felt a pinch in his heart, killing a kid because he was too dangerous to be left alive, that was one thing he never imagined he'll do.

"Perfect chance…" Naraku thought to himself as seven sand pillars roused from the ground, all of them were sharp as a kunai and strong as steel, they were all hardened by chackra, Naraku breathed in relief when he spotted an explosive tag in the sand, it all made his escape much easier.

"Bring it on! Show me everything you have! I'll crush it!" he screamed and started focusing chackra to his legs. The seven sand pillars started moving at him, they all clashed at him in the same time, exploding in a grand display of chackra and sand.

"it's over… let's go back" Gaara said quietly, no one could survive that kind of an explosion. He almost felt tears coming to his eyes, "sorry kiddo, no one should die without drinking sake once in their life" he took a small bottle of sake out and poured it over the sand.

"I wonder if I should tell Karen about this…" Ealla wondered loudly, Temari turned to her, "I'm not sure, but I think she needs to know about it". Gaara turned to the two, "you have to tell her about him, he deserves it, if not in life, then at least in his death" he said emotionlessly. The three started moving back, they had to report back to Sasuke about the mission.

Beneath the sand, a small flower grew; it was a rose, a pure black rose.

-----------=--------=--------

"sorry about all your shurikans and kunais, we'll have to do without them for a while now, the next step is to secure a safe house" Konohamaru ordered, it was a few years since the last time he tried to take any student, he concentrated on his science studies most of the time, but it didn't mean he lost anything from his shinobi abilities.

"what are you talking about, sensei? If not for you then we'd all be dead!" Doro almost shouted at him, Hob and Tack nodded in agreement, even though both of them were grazed by bullets many times while escaping, Konohamaru did manage to deflect most of the bullets away.

"it doesn't mean that it was the right choice, because of my jutsu, we're all weaponless, and we're facing an entire army that has the most modern weapons available…" the more he thought about it, the more he hated the situation, even though they had the advantage of the half urban leaf village battleground, they were still only a jounin and three genins. 

---------=-=-----------=-=---------

"Commander, we have reports on the attack"

"Well, go ahead, how was it?" Amber asked the soldier, she didn't expect a total annihilation of them, and she personally instructed everyone not to take prisoners, she wouldn't risk entering a ninja so close to them. Shinobies had advantage at close range, and she was absolutely sure that some would try to infiltrate as prisoners and attack them from behind.

"It seems that most of them escaped, the Sand and Rock villages are moving together, but they have managed to set up a strong defense, so we aren't expecting to be able to hit them anytime soon. The mist shibobies vanished after the first attack, we have a few sightings of them, but our forces won't be able to chase them for long, the Cloud suffered heavy losses, but they managed to escape as well, however, we have the Sound cornered, we estimate that we've killed about 15% of them" He looked at her, awaiting orders, their losses were few for time being, but everyone knew that as soon as the ninjas start attacking, the whole tide of the battle would change.

"message the assault commanders to continue chasing the escapees, but not to attack them, tell them that I said they should just make sure the enemy is really retreating, have everyone else siege the Sound, If we play our hand right, then we could dull them down from all the genins, it would be a serious blow to their prestige, who would want to entrust his secrets to a village that can't even protect his own kids…" Amber resisted the urge to laugh menacefuly, she wasn't ordering any children killing, all the kids were ninjas, they all knew that the may die, it was part of being a ninja.

--------=---------==-------------

 "Something changed!" Karen screamed in her mind, it wasn't just that the three large chackra signals moved, the forth one has undergone a change of some sort.

"indulge me, for I can't see through your Hyuuga eyes" he said in a weird tune, she couldn't decide whether it was formality or sacristy, probably the latest. 

"three of them left and are heading outside, but the other one looks different, he still seems chaotic but I feel like he's confined to one spot now, I'm not sure what it means, but it's kinda like a storm in a bottle" she explained.

"**And… what are you planning to do about it? your village camp was attacked and you're separated from everyone else, do you have a plan? Do you even know what you're you want to achieve?**" a chill went down Karen's spine, it was like someone unleashed the demon's mouth at her, it didn't hold any cynicism in it now, he acted entirely different from before.

"I just thought that… I thought you would help me! You're the immortal demon that never dies! You said it yourself, you said that you helped my father to become the great ninja he was!" Karen thought that she said those words out of anger and rage, but as soon as she heard herself she knew they came from a different emotion, she wondered if it could be that she felt betrayed by him? Almost hurt?

"**So, you want me to tell you what to do? No problem! Get out, assume my shape and go wipe those who wounded you off the face of earth! You can also run to Gray and escape with him to wherever you want! And here's a third option, get a spine and decide what you want to do!" **

She couldn't say anything, she tried telling herself he was wrong, but it just hit her that she has done nothing yet. So far all she managed to do was to crawl into the ground and hide from someone she didn't even who it was, it wasn't something a chunin should do; it was barely a genin's behavior.

@@##|----(888)----|##@@

"How are you dealing with the bullets?" Sakura asked hastly, she was already short on breath from holding such a barrier around them, but working together was the only way for them to survive, she would slow down the bullets, and he would deflect them away, it wasn't perfect, both Sakura and Sasuke were grazed too many times for comfort, but they were alive.

"I'm holding on… but I'm not sure how long I could keep this up, we're probably still on the first stage of their attack, and we're already almost out of chackra, we need to get to somewhere safe, we both have children waiting for us" Sasuke replied, even with his Sharinagan eyes he couldn't see and react to all of the shots.

"there is one place that we could go to and regroup at…" Sakura suggested, Sasuke nodded back at her in agreement, that place was perfect.

----%%$$******$$%%----

"Commander, we have reports about the Sound stranglehold, it seems that everybody is escaping from our grasp into the ruins of the leaf village" another report came in, but despite the  news, Amber was still sure in the plans success, "after all, I'm the one who planned this" she thought to herself in somewhat pride.  

"I haven't dismissed you yet!" she said sharply, stage one of the play was done, and it was now time for the second stage of her glorious victory, "I need you to deliver this command, you may not tell anyone about this, do you understand?" He saluted her and left the room with the command, all she needed now was to hold the sound at the same condition for two days, and after that, the village would be good as gone.

"A win-win-win situation, no matter how you look on it, I win…" Amber hummed to herself in satisfaction, on the best case; modern high-tech reinforcement would come and lay waste to the leaf ruins and the shinobies hiding in them. But even if that plan would fail, Amber knew she could call back the other troops and start nitpicking the weakest looking kids out, there were lots of ways to deal with captured shinobies, she devised most of them.

*****/------\*****

"They probably left already"

I can't feel their chackra anywhere around me

It must mean I managed to fool them

It has to safe to come out now

If only it wouldn't hurt so much to move"

Naraku took a deep breath, even though he didn't need to, it was more of a habit thing that he developed from his parent's memories, he pushed himself out of the ground, reverting once again from chackra to flesh.

Transformations were never easy for him and the Kyubi, it meant that he'll have to reshape his body once again from the beginning, he decided to use the teenaged form for now, "even if they are still alive, I could get another second or two to run while they recognize me" he said to himself, even surviving in his natural habitant was getting hard now.

"you might have to give up on your little family dream, you know" the Kyubi suddenly said, causing Naraku to crash to the ground.

"you know me for eight years, do you think I'll ever give up on that!?!" Naraku almost screamed in anger.

"Guess not, you're too much like your father for your own good, so get up and start moving, you could probably use some water jutsu to reach her, though it will hurt you like hell" the fox replied in his same non-chalet voice.

-------*/*/Night Hound* Army Camp\*\*-----

"So the commander has another plan? Man, she really never lets us know about anything. I won't be surprised if she says that everything we're doing the last week was just a distraction and that we're really working with the ninjas to capture some underwear thief…"

"I know what you're meaning; she has a neck for complicating things too much, she treats everyone like chess pieces, I heard she even fooled her superiors a few times to get results.. I think she hanged out too much with ninjas when she was young"

"But you have to admit she knows what she's doing, I joined the same day she did and look at the status difference, there are about seven rank of command between me and her… and yet she still knows about every little female-related joke I make during lunch time"

"You got that shit right! I mean the first part, not the joke thing, you fuckin' male pig, Commander Kazamatsuri knows her buiseness better than anyone else, I tell ya, one day she'll run the whole agency. And when that they will come, women will rule the world!"

"You mean the day of Armageddon? When death strikes and terror followes?"

"Isn't it supposed to be the other way around, first terror and then death?"

"If the world will become so twisted that women will rule it, then believe me that a few other things will change, like the space\time continuity and the 'cause and effect' rule."

"Shoban pig…"

---- Chapter 18: The Sunflower and the Black Rose – End---

well, I wrote the last part when I felt really anti-female, probably I was under the effect of meeting some really stupid girl, so don't pay it any attention.

On a more relevant matter, the next chapter won't come out next week, because of my zero-writing policy (did I mention I hate my job already?) the story has reached the point where I don't have any chapters on reserve. So chapter 19 (Which would be quite longer) will be publicized in an unknown date, look forward to it.

Oh, and here's the shout out (!) to the only reviewer of chapter 17; Zsych!

Don't worry about Naraku, the kid isn't dead yet, and he'll make his return just in time to be cool and kick ass, I couldn't make him win against Gaara, and I didn't feel like killing anyone at that point (even though I originally planned to kill Ealla), so he had to lose, however, I still think the fight was pretty cool, right?

Naruto won't wake up, sorry, bringing him back would be the equivalent of "and then the boy woke up from his dream" or "and then god came and fixed everything" [note: you can replace God with OC, it's basically the same in most stories].

I know that modern armies and ninjas can't live side by side, that's what makes this whole war so interesting, don't worry though, no one will gain a magical power up (making a soldier able to fight a ninja fairly, or giving a ninja the power to kill everybody with one jutsu) and everything will be very tactical, just like how it should be.

I really didn't get the evolution\whatever part, but I agree about "you can't take it with you", our English teacher took us to watch that play, it was quite funny!

Peace out, everybody!


	19. The Lost Madman

Wow, I'm back.

And with a really long chapter, to boot things up.

Most of it, up to the last ten or tweny sentences, was written almost two years ago, very close to the previous update, while FullMetal Alchemist was still a new anime (yeah, I'm a sucker for cameos, shoot me). The rest was written mintues ago.

More comments afterwatds, enjoy.

Chapter 19: The Lost Madman

It happened when Amber was only 16, three years before she joined the night hound organization, while she still lived in the fire country as a simple young lady with an undeniable future in the family business as assistant to her brother in arm making.

"I need all the kunais you have, and I need them now!" someone said, it was a skinny male at his late 40's, his hair was wild and white, she could tell he wasn't taking any care of himself over the past years, but the thing that attracted her attention were his eyes.

"I'm sorry sir, all the kunais we have are reserved for the leaf village ninjas, but if you'd like, I'll be glad to appoint you to a more civilian weapon smith… maybe you'll find something more suitable for your needs over there?" Amber answered calmly, mentioning Shinobi villages and hinting about their wrath was the best way to deal with goons who thought they could walk in and take arms for free, her second line of defense lay in her belt, a sharp knife and good reflexes.

"foolish girl! Haven't you heard? The leaf village has died! The demon killed them all! They should've let me kill him when I had the chance.." the man started crying, between his rugs, Amber could see a broken leaf forehead protector, as a weapon smith, she knew it wasn't broken in an accident, it was smashed broken, probably as a symbol of some sort.

"calm down already, start acting like a man and explain the crap about the leaf village dying, we have a very big order for next month, ya know…" Amber said, she walked to the door and put the 'closed' sign on, it wasn't as if anyone would come anyway, they sold ninja shurikans, not fishing hooks.

"Sit down girl, I'll tell you all about the leaf, and it's not the stuff that you'll hear if you ask the shinobies…" the man said, amber took another look at his eyes, it reinforced her opinion that he was mad, but he still seemed too cautious to be a true lunatic.

"My name is Kazamatsuri Mizuki, if you'd search for the name you might find it under the records of a chunin exam about 33 years ago, but that's not the point, the only that should matter is this…" he grabbed the forehead protector, held it in the air for a moment, and smashed it to the floor.

"The ninja villages are corrupted, they hide demons in them and let them grow, I must crush them all, before the come and get the rest of the fire country, it's my duty to protect them" Mizuki screamed, smashing the forehead protector time and again, making new cracks each time.

"calm down, you're gonna hurt yourself!" Amber screamed, she never liked shinobies as well, whenever they came, she would always have an ominous feeling, they reeked of blood and explosives, she tried once to throw a knife at one of them, a blonde haired guy with whiskers, but when she reached for the knife she couldn't find it. Only when they left the blonde haired ninja turned to her and smiled, without a hint of malice or anger, on that moment, she felt like something else was looking at her, something so horrible that it could crush mountains and entire nations without noticing it at all.

Then Mizuki dropped to the ground, senseless and unconscious, the fall opened up a few wounds over his body.

A month has passed, Mizuki stayed in their city, coming over to Amber's watch each day. They made a bet about whether the leaf shinobies would come or not to collect the kunais, if she were to win, then Mizuki would have to hospitalize himself in a mental center.

"And if I win?" he said. "then I want you to take over my name, I don't have kids of my own, and if I die while fighting the shinobi demons, I want someone to carry the Kazamatsuri name on…" that was their deal.

Another month passed, like a water spring forming, the rumors about the leaf village began to arrive, some said it was eradicated by monsters, some said it was attacked by other ninjas, some even claimed that they were punished by the gods for their sins, the final answer came when a sound shinobi entered the store.

The first thing that Amber noticed was that the ninja came alone, and by foot, it didn't make sense, there was a large shipment of Kunais and shurikans, which usually required at least ten ninjas and a mobile transport to get back to the village, and that was without counting the shinobis needed to protect the cargo.

"This is for your troubles, I'd like to see those weapons destroyed immediately" he said, handing her a check.

"I don't get it" Amber replied, not only that they wanted to destroy the merchandise, the check was much lower than usual, and was signed by someone else then usual.

"the leaf village is no more" he showed her a leaf forehead protector, "it was destroyed two months ago, as an official representative of the survivors, I'm canceling our contract with your family, go and inform your father" he said formally.

"I'll tell my father about this" She said, using the same formal tone as him, she bowed to him and run to the stairs, to wake up her father from his last night drinking spree.

"I know this guy" Mizuki jumped in her way and whispered, she didn't flinch, she spent enough time with him to get used to his stealthy ways and habits, "his the third hokage's grandson, Konohamaru is his name, ask him why he wears the sound symbol now". Amber nodded to him and continued going up the stairs.

"My father will be with you shortly, he wants to verify it himself, do you mind… Mr.…?" Amber asked, trying to sound as polite as possible.

"Konohamaru" he completed, "I don't mind waiting, I have to stay here until I see with my own eyes that all the weapons are melted down" he smiled.

"If he's willing to expose his name like that then he's probably saying the truth" she decided to herself, the next thing on her mind was how to inform her family of her name change, they already hated Mizuki's effect on her.

it was then that she decided to leave her family and do something, getting disowned by her father would allow her to go everywhere without worries that someone will send her back, she knew that staying in her city would only keep her back, and with some guidance from Mizuki, she was sure that she could change something.

-------------

"So, Kazamatsuri Amber, how do you want to start your new life?" Mizuki asked, though he won the bet they made, his wounds from years of captivity were effecting him deeply, deeply enough that he knew he could never leave the city and lead the crusade against the ninja villages.

"It's a secret!" Amber tried to use a childish voice, but it didn't work very well for her.

"I'm joining the night hound agency" she finally said, looking for approval in his eyes, as far as she knew, he considered those new founded agencies to be only one step different than shinobi villages.

"well, I could think of worse things for you to do, and it is your choice… but before you join them and leave me forever, allow me to teach you some things that you'll need to know as an adult and as a secret agent" he sent his hand through her hair, "it might not happen immediately, but soon enough, you'll start competing with Shinobi villages over customers, and when that happens, you'll have to be ready to kill or die"

That was the point where she started suspecting that he didn't really consider her joining the night hound agency a terrible thing.

"there's nothing pretty about it, it's not some Samurai novel, you'll never see two warriors facing each other, and then running to clash that only one of them will survive. Get that image out of your head, war and battles are exactly like life, only those who can outsmart the other win; misleads, lies and deceptions aren't looked down upon, the only people who fight fairly are living corpses, don't let yourself be drowned in some false romanticization of the battle field"

"What is he thinking, confusing me with such ideals?" she asked herself. He should have known that she didn't have much loyalty to neither the truth nor to other epic concepts.

"I know what you're thinking, but in the real life, it isn't that easy, ninjas start fighting at wars before they reach puberty, so you'll have to be ready to kill kids almost half your age, and I'm not talking just about the battle field, you'll have times when you need to line them all up for execution, even though they still aren't in the eligible age to drink sake…"

Killing kids? For some reason, the thought of it sent chills down Amber's spine, throwing knives at masked adults? No problem, cutting the head off the body of some muscled criminal? Sounded fun. But lining children and killing them after the fight? Working as an agent suddenly didn't seem so exciting.

-------Normal story, different scene-------

"So, she wants me to send three platoons of armored vehicles, without proper preparations, without being able to set down all the logistics required and she says she needs them in three days?"

"Sir, I know commander Kazamatsuri's demands quite a lot of vehicles, but you have been informed of this plan, haven't you?"

"Informed? She barged in here a month ago, before any plans concerning the chunin exam were made, and she said that she'll need tanks, APCs and transport vehicles for some secret operation, she clearly stated that I can't even order my men a maintenance check in fear that an enemy ninja might figure out we're planning something!"

"Sir, please, I'm just the messenger, commander Kazamatsuri apparently has complete back-up from HQ, they trust her more than anyone else, including some higher men in the chain of command, they've issued a warning to every soldier who's participating in the attack, they'll have the head of whoever interferes in the mission, in this case, it's ME and YOU"

"Fools, don't they realize that she's digging our collective grave?"

"Apparently, Amber knows that as well, some soldiers talked about it at the camp, and somehow she heard about it and executed them herself. She even wrote the inscriptions on the graves herself: 'personal grave or collective grave, which do you prefer?'"

"And no one informed HQ about that? Even they should be able to see where her vendetta is leading us…"

"They don't care about it, from their point of view, Amber is a great commander who devices impressive battle plans which buffs their pockets, and she has the lowest body count under her command. They don't especially care for her weird twinks, all they care about is that you'll deliver what she wants, can you do it?"

"Of course, I'm not chief of the armored forces for nothing… but I'll have to apply for some funds afterwards, the terrain is going to butcher their lower parts"

---------------------------

"So, how is it out there?" Sakura asked.

"It's not good, it seems that we've fallen to their trap, they got us cornered here, over five hundred soldiers, armed to death with rifles and grandees, they seem to be on patrol duty, but they aren't doing it thoroughly enough, we'll be safe here for a few more hours unless they decide to pick up their pace" Sasuke muttered, he cursed himself for volunteering to check the surroundings, he was already dangerously low on chackra and stamina.

Not to say Sakura wasn't in a similar state, keeping a barrier around them was as draining for her as using the sharingan was for Sasuke, and even with those two combined, they were still hurt, and able to move only thanks to the soldier pills they took.

"Rest a bit, I'll take guard from now on, we'll decide what to do later on" Sakura said, 'I just hope you're still safe, Tack' she prayed silently to herself.

----------

"Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…" Reilla counted footsteps from beneath the mud, she had to carefully consider all her options, she needed to finish this battle in one constant move, giving them even a split of a second to respond would prove fatal to her. The only thing she could think about was to disarm them from their rifles using a wind jutsu, but it still left the matter of actually dispatching them before they reach for their spare guns.

"I can't bring in enough water to create a flood strong enough to knock all of them down, a fire jutsu would be able to take only a third of them down and after that they'll shoot me… a lighting jutsu would have worked well if I would get the chance to touch them without being hurt from twenty bullets before…" she went through her options, an earth jutsu would also be out of the question, it was her weakest field of ninjutsu, that left her with option of waiting for reinforcement.

Unfortunately for Reilla, someone was just coming closer to them fast, and since the Night Hounds all moved in groups, Reilla realized it had to be a ninja, most likely a genin, and that meant that she'd have to act.

"I guess this is the only option I can try…" she said to herself, it was still in experimental stages, Reilla wasn't' even sure she could really accesses that power, and even if she could, what guarantee would she have that she wouldn't be lost forever?

"I still need to do it" she reminded herself, she started releasing chackra, as she expected, connecting to the liquid in the ground felt intimidating, not hard, it was almost to easy for her to connect to the demonic chackra in the ground and control it as if it was her own power.

"_Demon clone no jutsu_"

-------------------------------

"Arms check"

"I have three explosive tags, two smoke bombs, and four flash bangs, no shurikans or Kunais"

"Two explosive tags, two smoke bombs, a flash bang and five ropes, but not weapons"

"Ten meters of ropes and strings, three flash bans, an explosive tag and a smoke bomb, I'm also out of weapons"

"As I thought" Konohamaru said, looking at the three genins, all their metallic objects were now converted to a slump of iron, if he was given another two days or the proper equipment, he could have converted them back, and even use the metal from the bullets to produce more through his alchemy.

"No shurikans, no Kunais, and the three of us don't know any long range jutsu, we won't be able to survive an encounter with those guys…" Doro started calculating their odds, three genins and a jounin against a modern army, not good for them.

"Don't be so pessimistic, we still have some hope, right?" Hob asked with hope.

"Yeah, we have to be able to do something, we're ninjas, after all!" Tack tried to cheer them up, but his voice was tensed as well.

"I won't lie to you kids, even if I was in my top condition I wouldn't be able to stand against a patrol of them. We have to focus on survival, but if we attack and fail to kill them all, then those who are still alive will reveal our position, if we don't attack then we'll be surrounded by troops soon" Konohamaru stared his explanation, it was one of the reason he didn't want to be a jounin instructor,

-------------------------

"now, tell us exactly what's going on" Gaara smiled to the soldier, wiping the blood off his face, it was the blood of his newly fallen comrades, most jounins would be worried about battling modernly armed armies at such a distance. But with Gaara's sand balls, Temari's wind and Eailla's string skills, the battle was over before it began. The sand exploded onto their faces, then it was moved by the wind to hurt their eyesight as much as possible, and then Ealla waved her hands and sent the diamond strings to cut through the enemy's rifles.

"you better start talking…" Gaara said again, allowing his sand to form a claw over his right hand, "what are your orders? What are you after?" he inquired.

"I don't know! I really don't know! They said that we should patrol around for two days without getting into too much trouble, that's all of our orders!" the soldier screamed in fear. Gaara looked at Eella's and Temari's faces, they nodded him to continue.

"I'm going to ask you again, are you sure you aren't holding anything inside? Because if you are, I'll make sure your death will take much longer time than your friend's" Gaara stretched his transformed hand upwards, allowing the shadow to fall on the soldier's face, then he let loose of the sand from his hand.

The soldier screamed for a moment when he felt the drops of sand falling down on him, not heavy enough to harm him, but still enough to show him enough fear that made him lose his conscious.

Temari sent a glare at her brother, she hated seeing him going overboard with the intimidation attempt, "great, we've just lost our potential information supply…" she sighted, "what do you think?" she asked them.

"The guy was too much of wimp to lie, my guess is that they are trying to buy time" Ealla stated immediately.

"Same thing, so far, they were probably trying get us to this spot, maybe they are waiting for backup…" Gaara said.

"It does make sense, they were actually trying to avoid direct confrontation, so we had the chance to make the first move" Temari concluded.

The only thing the three were wondering about was what kind of reinforcement was on the way, the attack was too organized to be a regular raid, it had to run deep into the politics of land…

"Someone's here"

Gaara suddenly said, though no one was in their line of sight.

----------

It was the third patrol Tsubakeruo had to hide himself from, over thirty different soldiers so far, and he suspected that none of them was important and therefore, worth the trouble of assassinating. It only meant that the people pulling the strings behind this façade were still behind the curtains, and the play still hasn't reached it final stage, so there was still time left to change the course of actions.

'More information is needed' he decided to himself, the best place for that would be their Headquarters, in which the puppet masters behind the marionettes would probably be. But to get there, he knew that a map was in order, and such could only be taken from one of the patrols.

After three hours of following a patrol group, he managed to figure out an action plan to steal the operation map. It was quite simple for him, since he wasn't targeting all of them, he didn't need to fight them, moving between them was enough for his needs.

"_Rock clone no jutsu_" he raised two clones from the earth, then he placed one in the corner of the road, and picked up the other, Stone clones were much more durable than other clones, but had no movement potential, and were damn heavy to carry around.

"_Rock slide no jutsu_" three large boulders and a couple of stones rose from the ground, Tsubakeruo extended his right arm and pushed the stones, then focused chackra to his legs and jumped on to the boulder, "_Genjutsu: Skin of the Stone_", he and the spare clone merged into the boulder.

"Take cover! A rock slide!" a soldier shouted, even though he wasn't the first one to spot it, he was the only one to issue out a warning, it was enough to tell Tsubakeruo that he was the leader. "Over there! Fire!" he shouted when he noticed the stone clone which Tsubakeruo placed before.

When the boulders crushed onto the group of soldiers, Tsubakeruo jumped out, caught the leader and placed the second stone clone in his place, and used the same genjutsu to escape inside the stones. He figured that he'll have about twenty seconds to escape until the Night Hound soldiers would regroup and decide on the next man to be in charge.

Twenty seconds were fifteen more than what he needed, two second to pull out a kunai, another second to search for any secret traps that might have been set on the corpse, and the next two to reach out for all the essential documents that concerned the mission.

"Well, isn't this interesting…" Tsubakeruo thought to himself, he took great pride in his analyzing skills, and from the patrol route set to the soldiers, he could tell that they were trying their hardest to AVOID confrontation. "so they have another thing planned… this is way too much anti freezing liquid for a foot army" he said to himself, it seemed that the commander he killed also had responsibilities on the resources department, and he didn't get rid of all the papers as they have required him to. He wasn't exactly experienced when it came to modern weaponry, but a ratio of one liter of anti freeze liquid for 50 bullets seemed unreasonable, and suspicious to him.

"So, they have something else in mind, interesting, I guess a little trip to their HQ is even more in order now"

/\\\

"Three of them… one is Ealla, the second is the chunin examiner… and third is something else…" Karen thought to herself, her new sight revealed to her that even though they were healthy, their chackra system was a tad heated, implying that they were involved in something lately…

Suddenly, their chackra began to tense up, Ealla's and the other girl's chackra were still low, but the third was almost raging.

"What do you know… Gaara of the desert.. the terror of the wind country, and it looks like he was involved in a pretty big fight…" The Kyubi suddenly said, using his regular tone.

"you know him?" Karen asked, it was rare to hear the demon talking highly about anyone, even when he mentioned her father he was mostly sarcastic.

"Too well, just like you're how too close to him now, that guy is murderous psycho, with enough power to wipe out most living jounins without breaking a sweat, frankly speaking, I can think of maybe ten living people that have a chance at him, and a total of twenty people if you want to count a few dead guys over the years… I think he lost only one fight in his entire life"

"And to whom might that be?" Karen inquired, no ninja lost only once, even the greatest shinobies of all had to go through many hardships to get somewhere, even Sasuke, who was praised as the greatest ninja in the sound village. She heard once from Tack said that his father once bragged that he has beaten Sasuke to dust the first time they met…

"You don't get it, Gaara isn't on the same scale of geniusity as Sasuke is, Gaara's power is deeper and more terrifying than that, he's the type of guy that could stand with his hands in his pockets and still be as dangerous as ten other shinobies, and when he gets serious… he'd even be able to put up a nice fight against me" the Kyubi continued, that was the first time Karen heard him comparing anyone to himself, a mere human against a demon? The fox sure seemed to have respect to that guy.

"So who could beat a guy like that?" She asked, she couldn't think of any option, everyone in the village knew that their kage, Tsubakeruo, was not the most amazing fighter and that he got the position directly from the founder of the sound village. And from the way the Kyubi talked about Sasuke, it was obvious to her that he also wasn't the one to defeat that 'Gaara' guy…

"Your father" the demon said sharply.

-/\\-

"I can sense it now too, but I don't see anyone around" Temari said.

"It doesn't appear to be some genjutsu either, the chackra is too clear to be a worthwhile one" Ealla agreed.

"That doesn't matter, someone's here, we're already tired from fighting that kid, so he has the advantage over us" Gaara stated calmly.

"So, what are we gonna do? We can't blow up the ground randomly, it'll cause too much of a commotion, we don't need that with all these soldiers running around" Ealla questioned him, she was getting annoyed by his attitude, she wished that he'd panic once, just to be sure that he can also have uncertainties…

"Nothing, we keep moving like we discussed earlier, we have to rendezvous' with our village, you have your village and team to take care of. We only need to be more careful now, whoever's around us probably knows we detected him, so he won't attack unless he sees an opening, so we just won't create any" this time it was Temari who spoke.

"so, this is what we're going to do, listen carefully, unlike most missions, I'll be participating as well, so don't mess up, cuz nobody will be there to save you" Konohamaru looked at the three genins, considering their abilities, he could estimated his plan had a 60 chance to succeed.

"Let's go over our situation, we're outnumbered and out matched, we need a quick strike to kill all of our enemies, what would you normally do?" he asked them, his wife said things went better with genins if they understood the plan step by step.

"Ambush them, of course!" Hob said impatiently.

"That is what we're going to do, but not the traditional way, there are two differences between those guys and other ninjas, can you state them?"

"the first one is that they can kill us if they see us, right? But I can't think of anything else, beside the obvious fact they aren't ninjas..." Doro said.

"That is the right answer, sort of, they aren't ninjas, they so don't have ninjutsu or any ability above normal people, which means they won't be able to sense us until we make our moves, we could take out half of them before raveling ourselves to them, and still we'll be in position to strike again"

"so you mean we'll combine a hit-and-run tactic with an ambush, I can see that working out, but we genins would need to pair up to kill one guy, and I don't suppose you can kill ALL the others by yourself, right?" Tack questioned the jounin.

"I don't like that disrespecting tone of yours… but I guess you're right about that, however, We still have some arms left, and I happen to be from this village, and I happen to know a few secret trapdoors in the area" Konohamaru stated proudly.

"Why didn't you say so before!" the three genins shouted at him at the same time.

"This is the chunin exam, you're supposed to find out those things on your own!" he hoped that his excuse would pass.

"If you haven't noticed, the chunin exam was stopped a few days ago, and we're in the middle of a life-threatening situation!" Doro scorned at him, adding a juicy curse under his mouth.

"Look, I've been under a lot of stress lately, and I'm not even supposed to know about these trap doors, I peaked once at the hokage's books and I saw the map.. " Konohamaru tried another excuse.

"I don't buy that one… you don't get to be a jounin if you fall to stress, my dad thought me all about the requirement for every rank, for example: ANBU, high fighting skills, high stealth abilities, people who can't follow orders won't advance, nor those people with extreme physical abnormalities…" Hob started chanting the ranks; obviously, he began with the ANBU.

"Well, I guess you got me, too bad." Konohamaru sighed, "The truth is, until this point, there was still a chance for you to advance to the chunin rank, a field promotion if you want, it happens sometimes when Genins go through A-mission like situations… basically, I thought you'd have a chance to do it without resorting to my tactics, but your lives are more important than that…"

"and now that I told you about the process, you're prohibited from getting chunin, something about the _underneath the underneath_ rule, anyway, our survival is first priority" he closed the argument.

"we get the point, now tell us about the trap doors already" Doru said anxiously, Hob and Tack nodded in agreement.

"well, it's nothing that special, the fifth Hokage built them after the sound village attacked us about twenty years ago, we copied the idea from the sand's village underground tunnels, it's one of the best ambushing methods that I could think off" Konohamaru said quickly.

"I don't hear any reflections from the ground, are you sure they're here? I'm trying to sonar their location with my sound waves but I don't get anything…" Doro held his head next to the dirt, his hand also buried into it, sending vibrations through it and waiting for response.

"I never said that the trapdoors lead all the way to the surface, did I?" Konohamaru stated, "They all originate at three different points in the village, they are mostly 25 feet under ground, and the higher points are 7 feet under, it's requires a bit of effort to charge out of them directly, but it also allows movement from above"

--------------------------

"He's still tailing us" Ealla said, looking around her for any sight of anyone suspicious, it was the same as she did many times since they've noticed the presence of their tracker, but as any other time, she found nothing.

"Doesn't matter, if he comes out, we'll fight him. We can't waste our time worrying about this, we are probably being followed by some specialist, perhaps one with sever mental problems, the action pattern fits the profile" Temari reassured her, most villages discarded any person with mental issues, they deemed them as 'useless'. The sand village was the one who made the most use of them, the ANBU had a special training unit for them.

"Shouldn't we split up? Just to check which one of us is the target?" Ealla suggested quickly, even though there was interference in the exam, not a single shinobi believed it meant that all old rivalries among the hidden villages stopped, at best, it was a temporary truce.

"We can split up, but what's to say we won't be attacked? We've just survived a fatal meeting with both a monster ninja and an armed patrol, you can go wander about if you want to, but you should know that in our state, we probably aren't capable of anything beyond the chunin level jutsus, are you willing to run the risk of venturing alone in this situation?" Gaara railed at her, though he already knew it'd have no use, she was suspicious towards him ever since they met, so he hadn't believed that any outcome of their separating would be able to make her trust them completely.

----

Gray was running casually through the ruins of the leaf village.

To be honest, it wasn't the most casual type of running, as a shinobi, careful and silent movements were second nature to him, and still, Gray wasn't moving like the situation was supposed to dictate him to. It was a foolish decision on his behalf, had he moved a bit more precautious, he might have noticed that he was on a collision course with an agency patrol.

Yet, for Gray's great luck, another ninja was in the close perimeter, and though it was her first time performing the particular jutsu, the feat was an amazing success.

"one, two… six, seven!" Ealla counted to herself, she could hardly distinguish the clones from the scenery. At first glance, they looked like normal bunshins, but the more she stared at them, she found that they were still changing their forms, each one with his own special features and traits, one was slightly bigger than the rest, it wasn't just physical size, it's entire concept of pride enlarged the clone more than anything else.

The other clones were entirely different from the first, each one of them gave off a different feeling, one seemed to lust after the others, and one looked as if it could devour its surroundings in a feat of gluttony.

"ok, how am I supposed to move these things? I doubt that they have the same mindset as mine like normal clones have, and I certainly don't think they'll listen to me like summoned animals…" Reilla thought to herself.

_"Funny stuff, I never thought that I'd be such a coward"_ Someone suddenly talked.

_"No shit, and she still gets to live all the time, life's so unfair"_ another person said, but he had the same voice as the first one.

_"You know what I'd do if I got the chance to live all the time? I'd go around make money out of my ninja skills, and then I'd take over a country"_ a third voice spoke, but still the same as the other two.

_"Greed, Pride, Envy, just shut your traps already, we've got business to do, it seems that some ass is about to get killed, and we're here to stop it from happening" _a forth voice talked, Reilla suddenly came to realization that the voices were all very familiar.

_"Can't you watch your mouth, Wrath? You'd think that you could hold your aggression until the battlefield…"_ the fifth one spoke, Reilla finally noticed whose voice was it.

Her own.

The seven clones morphed a bit more, and without any slight indication of movement, were already far away from where they first appeared.

_"So, the kid we're saving is Karen's boyfriend? I was under the impression that we want Karen to come with us, so if the boy dies, won't it mean she won't have nothing to stay with the sound for?" _one of the voices asked, it was the same clone who talked before, Reilla recognized his sleazy tone of speech.

_"Sloth, when will you learn that not everyone is as selfish as you are?"_ one of the clones said, he looked around for a moment, and then continued _"sorry, my bad, it was a stupid question, you'll never change, and nor would I"._

"Uuhmm, how do you know who's that kid?" Reilla asked silently, Karen's boyfriend? She could think of four possibilities, and she liked none of the boys, the thought of telling the clones to withdraw the attack passed her mind for a second.

_"oh, you haven't figured it by yourself yet? The only people left in the perimeter are sound shinobies, and both Doro and Hob move in irregular patterns, due to the sound gear and the dog, and Lee has much larger steps than what we have here, therefore, the kid is Uchiha Gray"_ one of the clones explained, the others started performing seals and setting up traps.

_"Five, four, three, two, one… GO!" _a clone screamed, the seven of them started running towards the patrol.

------------------------------

A gunshot was heard, followed by many others.

Gray's first reaction was to freeze at his spot, the second reaction was to hide in one of the abandoned buildings.

The second wave of gunshot came after ten seconds, this wave was longer than the first. Gray counted the seconds, twenty have already passed and it didn't seem like the firing would stop anytime soon.

"it's taken too long, It's impossible to dodge so many gunshots for such a period of time, and it's unlikely that so many ninjas are charging at someone…" Gray tried to analyze the situation, all his thoughts stopped as a loud yell screeched through the sky.

"MY ARM! Get this thing off ME!" was the first yell Gray heard, but a moment afterwards, another yell was heard "AHHHHA! What is this thing! Shoot it already, FIRE!", however, Gray didn't hear any gunshots, just more and more screams. He decided to see what it was, reminding himself that he should find some help for Karen.

"That went on fine" Reilla thought to herself, granted, she had no real idea what the clones did to the soldiers, but the corpses on the ground indicated that they have ripped body parts from the original location and then bathed what was left in acid. However, they did the job well, nobody remained standing, and as an added bonus, their personal equipment was miraculously unharmed.

Gray tried sneaking towards the bodies, he knew that someone has taken care of the patrol, but whether it was a friendly shinobi or an enemy was yet to be seen. Of course, now he didn't have much to do about it, since whoever was there, had recognized him and called him out "come here, Gray, I need some information", a female voice, slightly familiar.

"Reilla, what happened here?" he asked, the bodies were mutilated, yet there was no apparent damage to the ground, nor was there new blood on her clothes. "I'm not sure myself, but more importantly, where is Karen?" seeing as the two weren't together, it meant that either the worst has happened, which seemed unlikely, or that they were forced to separate.

"she was injured, and then she did some weird transformation" he started saying, he saw her face expression changing so he quickly took back his words, "not that kind of transformation, she morphed into a flower of some sort, I think it was a flower"

"couldn't she transform you with her?" Reilla asked the boy, for a pair such as close as the two, it seemed unreasonable that they would choose to separate on their own, unless… "how bad was she injured?"

"Uh umm, it's hard to say, she told me it wasn't so bad, but she was hit by those projectile things these guys carry, and that's nothing to laugh about, isn't it?" Gray said, the female shinobi seemed exhausted, and as far as he could guess, it was from fighting the enemy at different conditions from normal ninja fights.

"Listen, kid, I'm not in the mood for playing guessing games, you're the last person who met with her, you're the only person to make the choice. We go back to her right now or we continue. You decide"

"me, but.. I don't, I'm not sure" Gray tried to say that he wasn't qualified to make that decision, protest that only a medical nin was supposed to give out estimations of that sort. And besides, did they really expect him to make a choice that might lead to his friend's death?

"I, We, don't have time for this"

Was she trying to add to the pressure he already felt? Of course he knew time was pressing, it was even a mistake staying at the same spot, in the middle of ten commando unit bodies. And what if he made the wrong choice, what if they come back and find Karen has been killed? How could he live with that? Wasn't there a leeway? A third option, a possibility to do both? To grab the rope at both ends?

Still, what was the right thing to do? He had to save Karen, didn't he? It was the right thing to do, as a friend, as a fellow villager, wasn't it?

But not as a ninja, or a teammate.

"I put my trust in Karen, she'll be fine, what do we do from now on?" he said.

If one lied hard enough to himself, it was possible to find the middle way.

End of chapter nineteen.

Yes, this is all, a lot of scene changes, and lots of other things I don't particulary remember since I've written them so long ago.

Don't have any expections for next chapter, it won't be out until it's done, and it won't be done for a long while… you can read my Inuyasha story, if you want, it's the same style, but more neatly tied, since I wrote the first half under the influence of pre-army phobia, and the 2nd half under in-army mania.

Besides, it's about secret agents, lots of lies and stuff. It's more Naruto than Naruto.

Anyway, that's all.

I hope you old readers are still here, and you new readers like the story.


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